


A Faerie Crown

by evilgrrl



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abused Kylo Ren, Abusive Snoke, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Evil Snoke, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy AU, Happy Ending, Heroine's Journey, Immortal Older Man/Younger Woman, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Eros and Psyche (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mythological Elements, NO Underage!, Physical Abuse, Protective Kylo Ren, Protective Rey (Star Wars), Torture, Tortured Kylo Ren, Verbal Abuse, faerie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:36:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilgrrl/pseuds/evilgrrl
Summary: When Snoke, the King of Faerie, hears a prophecy that a human girl will grow up to threaten his power, he orders his assassin, Kylo Ren, to kill her.When he spares her life instead, he sets events into motion that will haunt him for years to come.Even in a fairy tale, true love may not conquer all.





	1. Once Upon a Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witchoil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil/gifts), [ancientcityjenn](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ancientcityjenn).

> This is my contribution to the 2019 Reylo FanFic Anthology: Amid Secrets and Monsters (see link under "collection"). 
> 
> My choice of "monster" was the Fae.
> 
> I tried to incorporate the Reylo dynamic and universe with traditional mythology about Fairies. I was also inspired by the beautiful story of [ Cupid and Psyche.](https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/ancient-fairy-tale-cupid-and-psyche-where-love-endures-against-all-odds-003393)  
  
  
  
Art by the wonderful @boomdafunk on Twitter.  

> 
>   


**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A child is born. 
> 
> A prophecy is made. 
> 
> An evil king is threatened. 
> 
> An assassin is sent to kill an innocent child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone in my Reylo writers' group, the Clops, and other group chats that helped me. 
> 
> Special thanks to @Witchoil and @Ancientcityjenn and the good people who put this anthology together and held my hand. 
> 
> Extra special thanks to Don and Chris for supporting and putting up with me. 
> 
> *
> 
> Fairy Tales are thought of as stories for children and subjects for Disney movies, but it has not always been so. Fairy Tales are modern versions of Folk Tales, stories from earlier times told to explore the mysteries of life and the consequences of one's actions. Folk Tales are also versions of mythology from ancient societies and religions. 
> 
> They did not always have happy endings.

CHAPTER ONE

A long time ago, when the world was full of wonders, there were magical beings called Faeries. Some of them _looked_ like us, but they were not like us. They lived for hundreds of years, in special places of their own, according to their own laws and customs.

Many stories were told about them; some good and some bad. One thing all these “fairy tales” agreed on, however, was that the Fae had special powers. They were able to tap into an energy force created by all living things, which they called magick. 

Their lives and ours did not often overlap. This story is about a time they did. 

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a wise king and a kind-hearted queen ruled over a small peaceful kingdom. For many years they longed for a child, believing their lives would not be complete until they had one. Finally, their dream came true. They had a daughter, and they named her Rey, like the sun. 

The king and the queen were both overjoyed to have a child. She was healthy and whole and seemed intelligent as well. Most new parents think their baby is adorable, but Rey really was. She had huge hazel eyes of green and gold, chubby pink cheeks, and silky tufts of fawn-colored hair. Her mother and father loved her very much and did everything they could to spoil her.

In fact, everyone in the castle loved Rey and coddled her as much as possible. 

“Such a wee, small bairn,” her nursemaid, Julfe, cooed. Her own babe at home had just been weaned, and everything with him had been a mighty struggle. This one latched on right away and wasn't the least bit fussy. 

The queen’s ladies in waiting enjoyed watching over mother and child, and often discussed how to best protect them from harm. 

“I’m so glad we had the wise woman in to bless her. Rey is so healthy and well-behaved,” said one. “She’ll be a great queen when she grows up.”

“Don’t brag about her too much,” another one warned her, “or you’ll draw the attention of the Fae, and they’ll put a changeling in her place.”

The first one blanched. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot myself. I won’t speak of it again.”

The queen's serving women doted on Rey as she grew, each vying for the chance to rock her cradle. 

“Caso, you spent all yesterday afternoon with Rey. It's my turn,” Heasm complained.

“You stoopa!” her sister Caso argued back. “That was the day before yesterday. It's my turn again now!”

In fact, everyone made excuses to come to visit and play with her, from the haughtiest knight to the lowliest stable hand. They brought her small gifts and treats, bows and rattles and little dolls. Curiously, she appeared to understand who was speaking to her and responded appropriately. 

As she grew, her winsome smile, soft fawn-colored hair, and pretty eyes attracted everyone, and her sweet disposition helped her make friends easily. But her beauty was far from her greatest gift, for she was curious and intelligent as well.

One day, Lady Jenfis, the most revered seer in the kingdom, came to call on the royal family. They received her in their chambers, which was a great honor, and watched together as Rey played with some blocks and toy stormtroopers. Most visitors were charmed by her, but the seer was solemn and unsmiling.

“I have seen visions of this girl's future,” she told them gravely. “It is possible she will become a very powerful ruler, perhaps the greatest queen of all time. But I have also seen a different road she may take.”

The king and queen looked at each other uneasily. Lady Jenfis' prophecies were notoriously accurate. 

“On her fourth birthday, a monster will come for her. A dragon who will torment mankind with fire and steel and will be feared even by those in the Underworld. If he does not succeed in killing her, he will marry her instead.”

Rey's mother became very distressed. She took her husband's hand and squeezed it tightly. 

“On her fourth birthday? But she's just a child! Why would anyone want to kill her?”

Lady Jenfis had no answer.

“Thank you, Lady Jenfis,” the king said graciously, visibly less upset than his wife. “We appreciate your warning and we will consult the royal counselors on the appropriate measures to protect her.”

The lady shook her head. “I believe that would be a mistake, your Highness. Trying to prevent a prophecy from happening often results in something even worse.”

After the lady had left, the queen started crying in despair. 

Her husband knelt down beside her to comfort her. “Darling, this was only a prediction. It hasn’t happened yet, and it may never happen. Even if it does, it’s four years away. We will find a way to protect her before then.”

The queen squeezed her husband’s hand as he wiped away her tears. “And in the meantime, we will spend as much time with her as possible, and enjoy her while we can.”

“Of course,” the king agreed as he leaned forward to kiss his wife on the forehead. “She may still grow up to be a strong queen, which the lady also predicted.”

The queen smiled at him and said, “I’m sure you’re right.” But she still watched Rey fretfully. 

At this time, the Fae were ruled by kings and queens as well. A beautiful queen and a handsome king ruled the Light Court, where they encouraged music and drama, painting and dancing, great feasts and the drinking of fine wines. They made merry and enjoyed life to the fullest. 

In the Dark Court, however, an ugly, old king sat on the throne alone and ruled with a fist of steel. They called him King Snoke, and he had been their sovereign for over a hundred years. He was cunning and deceitful, manipulating people and using any situation to his advantage. His subjects did not love him, but they feared and respected him, which he believed was better. Most never came to call on him, and when they did, it was usually a matter of some import. 

So, of course, King Snoke felt distinctly uneasy when his apprentice, Kylo Ren, approached him in his Throne Room unexpectedly. Kylo should have been training at this time of day.

His student knelt on one knee ceremoniously until Snoke motioned for him to stand. 

“Sire, the wizard Celestiel requests an audience. He says it is urgent.”

Snoke sighed. “I don’t like wizards,” he said in his slow, hoarse voice. “But you ignore them at your own peril.” 

Kylo stared up at him in veneration. “Yes, Sire.” 

He thrummed his fingers on the arm of his throne. “If it’s urgent, that means it must be bad news.”

“Most likely, Sire. He seemed more nervous than usual.”

“Then there will be more bowing and scraping than usual,” Snoke said distastefully. “He is right to be afraid, though. I often _do_ kill the messenger.” 

The King saw the news would be terrible as soon as the old seer entered the Throne Room.

He looked fearful already, even as he knelt automatically, his long white beard skimming the floor.

Snoke recognized him officially with a wave of his hand. 

“Celestiel, you may rise.” 

The old wizard did as he had been bidden and stood with a bit of difficulty. He seemed afraid to look his lord in the eye, which did not bode well either.

Snoke, taller than even the largest human, was a giant compared to the little wizard. He relaxed and sat back in his throne to put the seer at ease, but the gesture failed miserably.

“Good day, er...Your Majesty,” Celestiel greeted Snoke hesitantly. “I...um, come to tell you of a prophecy.”

If it was only a prophecy, the wizard’s sense of importance was probably misplaced. In Snoke’s experience, mystical predictions very rarely came to fruition. He leaned on the armrest of the throne, and made an impatient gesture with his hand for the wizard to continue.

“Thank you for seeing me, Your Highness,” Celestiel said, coughing awkwardly. “All of us, that is, your seers, have been having dreams and visions of a disturbing nature.”

“I have heard more dire predictions in my lifetime than I can even remember. Most of them have come to nothing.” 

The wizard clutched his robe apprehensively.

“Go ahead and tell me then,” Snoke said with a bored sigh. Even during a mundane encounter like this one, his voice was still the low silky whisper it had always been. That was one part of him that hadn’t aged poorly. 

The wizard cleared his throat gracelessly and continued, his own voice shaking just a little.

“A child of the Light is about to be born in the human realm, Sire, a princess. As she grows, she will come to challenge your own power. We think--”

“How can that be?” Snoke interrupted condescendingly. “The human realm is separate from our own. How could anything she does there have any effect on me?" 

The elderly wizard looked flustered. “Well, you must consider the balance, my King. The Faerie world and the human world are joined, as you know. They are two parts of the same whole, just as Light and Darkness are married. When darkness rises, light rises to meet it. You may, however, be able to avoid the fulfillment of this prophecy. If you leave the existing threads of Fate in place and simply weave in your own intentions--”

“If it cannot be avoided, I will deal with it when it happens,” Snoke said wearily. “_If_ it happens.”

“But Sire,” the seer tried to continue, “if the balance is upset--”

Snoke had been patient with this foolishness for too long. Now he stood and raised his voice in anger, cutting the wizard off.

“Enough!” His words echoed through the cavernous throne room. “The balance is not important! You are dismissed!”

Snoke sat back down as the little seer turned tail in fright and fled. 

“Such small minds,” he said with carefully cultivated gravitas. Kylo watched him attentively. 

“My magick is the strongest of the age. I cannot imagine it being truly threatened. Even the King of the Light Court is no danger to me now. How could a human frighten me, much less a girl child?”

Could _anyone_ really be a threat to his power?__

_ __ _

_ __ _

His eyes flicked to his silent apprentice, respectful and compliant, grateful just to be in attendance to his Master. 

Even if Kylo had been likely to rebel, his magickal ability did not begin to approach Snoke's, even with Kylo’s unusual Hand of Power.

His apprentice, who had held such promise in the beginning, had not yet been able to rise in his own power. Until he was willing and able to reject compassion once and for all and accept the consequences of his own actions, he would be unable to progress any further. A great master needed to break the force of magick to his own will, which Kylo could not bring himself to do. He was not a danger to the king.

No one, Snoke concluded, answering his own question. No one could materially threaten his power. He released Kylo with a wave of his hand and went back to his own business.

At first, Snoke had been sure he had handled the matter of the wizard’s prophecy correctly. The very idea of a mortal who was adept enough to defeat him was ludicrous. He had been King for over a hundred years, and he wielded the Hand of Lightning, the strongest of the known powers. 

Yet as the days passed into weeks, questions about this predicted rival began to trouble him. Who was she? Where did she live? How strong was she in actuality? His mind worried over it late at night like a dog with a bone. How could a mere mortal endanger him? 

Finally, after a number of days of such uneasiness, Snoke decided the most prudent thing to do would be to spy on the girl to determine how much of a problem she might truly be. So he used his Faerie magick, which tapped into the web of energy created by and existing between all living things to find her. He closed his eyes in concentration and sent his awareness rolling across the land like an ill wind, searching. Finally, he found what he sought: a human with an energy sign like that of the Fae. It was a girl, just as the wizard had predicted, still a babe in arms. He sighed in relief. Surely she was no danger to him just yet.

Snoke was aware, however, of the way that time moved differently in Faerie than it did in the mortal realm. He might spend a day or a week considering his course of action, while in the World of Man the princess would grow tall and strong, studying with masters of both metaphysics and warfare. _Then,_ after she had become formidable, she might come to challenge him. 

Destiny was a tricky thing. Sometimes prophecy was fulfilled in the very act of trying to avert it. He decided, therefore, the best course of action would be to act now instead of later. He would locate this girl and have her killed before she had the chance to become a threat. He had sensed some small amount of power within her already. Best to kill her now. He even knew of a way he might be able to acquire some of her power upon her death and add it to his own, strengthening his own ability. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice reminded him that taking the girl's energy had the potential to upset the balance of darkness and light kept so scrupulously by nature, as his seer had warned him. He dismissed the voice, believing he need not concern himself with such superstition.

Feeling pleased with himself, he summoned Kylo Ren to discuss dispatching the girl. The young noble was not only his heir and a capable knight, he was also Snoke's most deadly assassin.

Like many in the Dark Court, Kylo Ren was handsome by human standards. His face was attractive in an unconventional way, but Snoke knew that he compared himself to the unrivaled beauty of those who dwelt in the Light Court where he had grown up and where those who were dark of hair and eye were not smiled upon. 

Snoke knew his ill-omened history and used it to manipulate him. As such a child, Kylo had never been able to live up to the standards his parents had set for him, physically or in any other way. He had been overpowered and unable to control himself, even before his Hand of Power had manifested. He had thrown temper tantrums on a regular basis, was often moody, and had few friends. The ones he did have had used him for favors they never returned, then abandoned him. It had made him bitter and vain, perfect material for Snoke to mold according to his plans.

Now Kylo was a grown man, tall and broad, large enough to make most mortal men fear him on sight. He strode into the throne room, dressed all in black as always, and knelt humbly before his king and master. At a signal from Snoke, he removed his helmet respectfully and stood with his eyes down, waiting to be addressed. 

“There has been an awakening in the Light,” Snoke said softly. His voice was low and deep and had the texture of a gravel riverbed. “Have you felt it?”

“I felt...something, but I did not know what it was.”

“A human strong with magick has been born, a princess.”

“Yes,” he answered simply. 

Snoke had designed his throne room to inspire maximum awe, with an elevated throne and a bright light that washed down on him, partially obscuring his face to menacing effect.

He leaned forward and spoke low and intimate.

“The most cautious course of action, given what my seers have told me, is to eliminate her now. I need you to find and slay her, while she is but a babe. It is the best way to ensure that she will never surpass me.”

Kylo lifted his head to look upon his master's scarred, shriveled face. “It shall be done.”

Snoke relished Kylo’s sincerity and enthusiasm. For his master - the only person who had ever treated him with any warmth and appreciation - he would do anything.

“It may not be as easy as you surmise,” Snoke warned him, his inflection thick and slow. He needed to stoke his student’s sense of inadequacy and then challenge him in order for him to do his best work.

“If she is all they say she is, she will have powerful magick. Perhaps she will already be even more powerful than _you,_ Master of the Knights of Ren. Perhaps she has already surpassed you in her magickal ability. Remember also that she is royalty and will be guarded as such. You must use all stealth to reach and eliminate this girl. You must also use all speed, as you know that time moves differently there. We do not know how many days have passed since she was born. Her energy sign will lead you to her.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

“Yes, Master.”

Snoke looked deeply into Kylo's eyes and mentally shared the general location and the life signature of the child. 

Then he produced a mysterious object like a ball of glass except for the colors on its surface, which changed and shifted constantly like oil on water. He gave it to his apprentice, saying, “Capture her essence in this globe as she dies so that I may absorb it. Then bring me proof of her death. If you succeed in this endeavor, you will please me greatly.” 

“You have trained me well, my Liege, and by the grace of your training, I will succeed,” Kylo said earnestly, hungry for praise from his mentor.

“We shall see,” Snoke pronounced as he dismissed the younger noble from his presence. “We shall see.”


	2. The Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Princess Rey's fourth birthday approaches, her parents try to cope with the terrible prophecy that threatens their daughter.

As Rey's fourth birthday approached, her parents secretly made plans. They installed their most trusted noble as their regent, and left the castle a week early, reasoning that if they kept her safe through her birthday, they would have thwarted the prophecy. They brought along more than enough clothing, supplies, and credits for the time they were planning to be gone, then left in a large but modest speeder, telling no one they were going.

King Patma worried that the kingdom would suffer in their absence. He had wanted Queen Kellis to go into hiding with one of his knights instead, while he stayed to supervise the kingdom. Queen Kellis reminded him that their daughter was at least as important as the kingdom. She would be queen one day, and the queen and the land were one. 

So, since they loved their daughter more than their kingdom, they did what was best for her. 

Immediately upon leaving the Throne Room, Kylo Ren went to do his master’s bidding. He wore his finest armor, glossy black and covered with scales like a dragon, and took with him his finest weapon, a magickal red saber. 

First, he cast a glamor to disguise himself as a human. He concentrated on the location Snoke had given him and gathered his strength. Then he created an enchanted door into the World of Man very close to the castle where Snoke had sensed the girl. He took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. 

He arrived in the courtyard of the castle where Rey’s parents reigned. It was a busy place, congested with knights sparring, people working on broken-down droids, stable hands leading horses about and more. Kylo, who had seen all the cities of the world, thought it looked remarkably rustic and primitive. He kept his mind focused on his mission, not allowing himself to become distracted by any of the mortals, no matter how comely or clever they might seem.

His glamor allowed him to go unnoticed amongst the humans while he tried to locate the child. He searched for the unique sign of her life force but was unable to detect it anywhere in the vicinity. 

As he walked around, trying to sense where she was, he overheard people in the courtyard discussing the disappearance of the royal family, including the princess, Rey. Kylo pricked up his ears at that and took it as a sign that they had been warned of his coming somehow. Feeling thwarted, Kylo wanted to smash the half-repaired electrocatapult next to him in rage, but he held onto his self-control and tried to think.

If the royal family had been warned, then they would be at least one step ahead of him and he would have no time to waste. He sent his perception out looking for an energy similar to the one his master had shown him and found traces of it on the road out of town. When he located its source far away, he calculated that it would be better to follow the girl in this realm than to expend so much of his energy opening another magick door. It took a lot of his power, and he still needed to be able to return to Faerie.

He honed in on the strongest remaining traces of the girl’s energy, commandeered a land speeder, and headed out in that direction. The trail was cold, but Kylo was going to find the girl by tracking her life force signature, following her path. Even with his preternatural strength and endurance, however, he was not able to catch up with the little family quickly. He rode night and day until he finally reached them just outside a wretched hive of scum and villainy known as the town of Jakku.

When he finally managed to overtake them, their land speeder had been attacked and overturned by reavers who were pilfering the bodies as Kylo watched. He determined very quickly that the girl was not among them, but reasoned that she should not be far. 

Before he even began to scan for her energy signature, he heard childish wails of hurt and confusion coming from the overturned speeder. He cast a small spell to make the thieves uninterested in seeing him, then quickly approached the wreck. 

Unnoticed, Kylo lifted the overturned vehicle and pulled out the crying girl. Her sobs began to diminish when he picked her up, and by the time he had placed her into his own speeder, she had mostly stopped crying, watching him with big hazel eyes. It was easy to distract her from seeing her parents' bodies, which would do nothing but upset her. He drove away feeling satisfied with himself and musing on the irony of her parents meeting their fate in their very attempt to avoid it.

Once they were away from the site of the ambush, the small girl scooted over and tried climbing into Kylo's lap, but his bulky armor kept her from it. When he paused the speeder and magickly vanished the dragon armor, she wrapped her thin little arms around his neck and wept pathetically, clinging to him. A cramped feeling of pity settled heavily on Kylo's chest, and he comforted her as well as he could while trying to figure out the best method to do away with her, as his master had commanded. 

First Kylo decided to tie her up and leave her on the top of a rock to die of exposure. He found a boulder in an isolated location and traveled there, but when the time came, he changed his mind and decided it was too near a village they had passed. Someone might rescue her before she died of hunger and thirst, and then he would have failed in his mission. Thinking carefully, he drove on to look for another place. None of the rocks he saw were far enough away from human inhabitants however, so he resolved to figure out another way to get rid of the girl. She sang a little song he didn't recognize under her breath as they traveled, hanging onto him the whole way.

Next, he found a cliff to throw her from but became distressed at the idea of her little bones breaking and animals eating her corpse. Besides, dropping her from a high place struck him as too direct a means of killing her, as did strangulation or suffocation. He looked down at her sleeping form, cuddled up next to him. Her soft breath lightly stirred the brown hair on her forehead. It would be better if he only _allowed_ her to die, instead of actually murdering her himself. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

Then Kylo thought of leaving her in a sandstorm, the local variety of which was called the Breath of R'iia. The storms could last for days and were marked by deafening winds and thunder. They were also known to strip flesh from bone and would certainly kill an undefended child. But then he imagined the way she would cry when he left her and thrash as the wind hit her and how her delicate little mouth would fill up with sand, and he discarded that method too. 

Apparently, he couldn't kill her at all. 

He even found some small part of him wanting to take her home with him. He would feed her bread and honey, and then she would stay there with him forever, since once a human eats or drinks while in Faerie, they are trapped there always. 

It was a lovely little daydream, but his survival depended upon squelching such things. He sighed and ruthlessly pushed the fantasy aside and put it away, knowing that Snoke would never allow her into Faerie, since one day her power would rival his own. 

The best thing to do would be to hide her in the most unlikely place, where no one would think to look for lost royalty: the wretched desert town of Jakku near the site of the speeder wreckage. It took him several hours to drive back there, but it fulfilled his requirements of isolation and hardship well enough to hide her safely, assuming Snoke believed she was dead. If his plan didn’t work, Kylo himself would be dead, if not by Snoke’s hand, then by his own at his sense of shame from betraying his master, who had made him into what he was today.

He drove through the miserable little town, such as it was, and got his bearings. He bought food and drink for both himself and the child, and they took their meal together at a local gathering spot. Like a good girl, she ate obediently as he told her to, and asked him a few questions in her high, childish voice. He answered her with some nonsense that she accepted as conversation and minded her manners well. She was utterly charming, and he would miss her company. 

After listening to some conversation from the residents, he located the slaver and junk boss named Unkar Plutt. Kylo gave him a good number of credits to take care of the girl until she was old enough to earn her keep by working for him, as many others in the area did. That amount would cover far more than her upkeep, but he felt guilty leaving her there, afraid that Plutt might stint on her care. Kylo sensed her magickal ability just as Snoke had, and perhaps that would help her a bit too. In any case, he could think of nothing else to do.

Kylo felt mournful when their moment of parting approached. So he did what he always did and pushed his feelings out of his mind so he could do what was necessary. He knelt down next to the little girl and, using a small dagger, cut off a lock of her hair and a piece of her bloody clothing. He wrapped the hair in the dirty fabric, folded it up and tucked away in his tunic. He would use these artifacts as proof to show Snoke that he had killed her.

By now, Rey understood what was happening to some degree and was crying pitifully again. She'd been taken away from her home, survived a horrible crash, and now the only person she knew was leaving her in a strange place with a big, ugly man.

He put his hands on her skinny shoulders and looked her in the eyes. 

“I have to go now, Rey.”

“No! Don't go! Please!” she begged him, and it hurt his heart to hear it. “Where are my mommy and daddy? Why are you leaving me?”

Kylo didn't know what to say. He had grown to feel affection for her even in the short time they had been together, and he didn’t want to admit to her that he was supposed to have killed her. What would make her feel a bit better? Ease her pain without lying, which the Fae are explicitly forbidden to do?

So he wiped her eyes and told her a little story to comfort her. 

“Once upon a time,” he started, with the opening to all proper fairy tales, “there was a little girl named Rey. She lived in a castle with her parents, who loved her very much.” 

Here the little girl nodded. She understood the story was supposed to be about her.

“One day they all left to go on a trip together, but their speeder crashed. A handsome prince came and rescued her, but he couldn’t find her parents. He was forced to leave her with a stranger, but he knew her parents would be back to get her someday. She just needed to wait for them. One day they returned for her and they hugged her and told her how much they loved her. They took her back home to the castle with them and they all lived happily ever after." 

Then he gave the child a hug and a kiss on the cheek, got into his speeder, and went on his way. 

Believing he had done his best for the girl under the circumstances, Kylo rested in the speeder in preparation for opening an enchanted door back to Faerie. It was going to be a very tiring task, and the exhausting ordeal had already taken longer than he had anticipated. He would also have to put some magickal energy into the king's orb, as he had been told to capture her life force when she died. 

Kylo took out his dagger, the same one he had used to remove a lock of Rey's hair and a bit of her clothing, and cut the skin of his own chest over his heart. He let the physical pain, his anger at Snoke, and his sadness at leaving Rey behind transform itself into dark energy, which he siphoned carefully into the orb for the king. It glowed somberly, with little bits of his suffering peppered through it like black glitter before he put it in his pocket.

After resting a while longer, Kylo created another enchanted door back to Faerie and went through, leaving the speeder behind him. Only a day or two had passed in Faerie since he'd left. 

Snoke was impatient to see him, however, and summoned him as soon as word reached him that his apprentice had returned. Kylo washed his face and hands and combed his glossy black hair to make himself presentable for his royal audience and went to the Throne Room as commanded.

One of the king's red-garbed Praetorian Guards announced his presence.

As usual, Kylo fell to one knee in deference to his sovereign and cast his gaze down.

Snoke dismissed everyone else in the Throne Room, except for his ever-present guards, to meet with his student privately.

“Kylo Ren, you have returned.” The air vibrated with Snoke's authoritative voice. 

Kylo raised his eyes. “Yes, Master.” 

“Yet I see no body in front of me," he challenged his apprentice in irritation. "Where is the girl?" 

Kylo reached into his tunic and produced the bloodied cloth that held a lock of Rey's hair. Snoke motioned for him to advance, so Kylo stood and brought the objects forward. 

Snoke took the little curl in the gnarled claws of his hands. 

“What is this?” he asked as if in genuine surprise. 

“The girl's hair and clothes, my master,” Kylo answered solemnly, thinking mournfully of the orphan.

Snoke's withered mouth dropped open in astonishment, revealing his crooked, yellowed teeth. 

“Is that all?” Snoke questioned again. His voice grew louder in outrage. “A rag and a bit of hair that might have belonged to anyone?”

Kylo reached into his tunic again and produced the glowing black ball into which he had put his energy and his essence, but said nothing. That way, he was able to imply that he had killed Rey without lying.

“You wanted proof, Sire,” Kylo said deferentially, careful not to tell a direct falsehood.

“Are you mad, apprentice?" Snoke demanded, taking the sparkling ebony orb from him. "Is this all you have to show me? I wanted a body. Why not a hand, or at least a finger, if not the head?" 

Kylo didn’t remember Snoke asking for a body, but he told himself he must not have been listening well. He knew that since Snoke hadn’t known what the girl looked like, he could have brought any girl’s body and had Snoke believe it was hers. He also knew it was sometimes best to let the king find something to complain about. 

Snoke put the items down on the table next to his throne and gave Kylo a very disapproving look. 

“I cannot believe how much you have disappointed me, my student,” he said in a grave voice. “First you took too long to complete the task. I expected you back after a few hours, not days. Then you failed to bring back satisfactory proof that you have carried out your assignment.”

“I am sorry, Your Highness,” Kylo apologized. His criticisms seemed impossible to avert, but that was the way Snoke had always acted. If Kylo had been alone, he would have taken out his frustration by destroying the closest piece of furniture with his saber in frustration. As it was, he swallowed hard and controlled himself. 

“As punishment for your appalling failures, you will be flogged. Publicly. With a cat o' nine tails. Tonight." 

Kylo felt a sick sense of mortification that he had disappointed the king again, but he had given it his best effort. 

He waited while Snoke's stewards made the announcement and brought the nobles and courtiers inside. Their eyes glittered avidly as Kylo removed his tunic and undershirt. He was given no support to hold on to, so he would have to stand on his own two feet during the whipping. 

Kylo braced himself and accepted his punishment stoically, even with the public humiliation. He actually felt lucky that he had escaped the wrath of Snoke's Hand of Lightning, which had thrown him across the room more than once. Fortunately, Snoke used it sparingly, as its use damaged the sender as well as the receiver, and every time he used it, it ate away at him a little. 

As the barbed lashes cut his skin, he felt the pain was worth knowing that he had enabled the little girl to live out her natural life somewhere instead of being slaughtered like an animal. He knew that he would heal as all immortal beings do. She only had her one short life, and it would be over before he knew it. 

After the punishment was finished, the audience filed slowly out of the room, tittering as they passed Kylo, who was shuddering from his ordeal. When they were gone, a healer approached him with an offer to help him recover. 

“Stop!” Snoke yelled. 

The healer was not even sure it was he that Snoke addressed for a moment, but stopped soon enough. 

Snoke told him his services would not be needed before addressing Kylo. 

“I want you to carry the scars of this punishment for the rest of your life, as a reminder of how you have failed me. Approach me, Kylo Ren.”

Kylo’s body was not completely obeying the commands his mind was giving it, but he managed to make his way to stand before the throne without staggering. 

“On your knees.”

He dropped to his knees obediently, knowing that rising would be much harder. 

Snoke slowly rose from his seat and stepped toward his student. 

“The mighty Kylo Ren, Knight of the Dark Court. When you came to me, you were young, inexperienced, but full of promise. I saw what all masters live to see: raw, untamed power! Someone who would be strong enough to rule my kingdom after me. Someone who would make me proud.”

He reached down and touched Kylo’s cheek, a breach of all protocol, all etiquette, all respect of one adult for another. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“Now I fear I was mistaken.”

Despite the indignity of being treated like a child, Kylo still yearned so much for his master’s approval and love that he accepted even that humiliating display of affection. Snoke’s judgment of him, though, was almost unbearable. He lifted his head as his teacher dropped his hand away from Kylo’s face. 

“I have given everything I have to you, Master.”

Snoke had turned his back on Kylo and was walking away, back to the dais of his throne. 

“And yet it is not enough,” he said sadly. “Go now while I decide if I need to designate a different heir.”

Kylo got to his feet unsteadily, feeling both the effects of the flogging and the reprimand from his teacher. He was able to keep from faltering too much on his way out, heading to his chambers to bathe and rest after his ordeal. Even as Snoke’s words burned through his brain, though, he thought of Rey and how he had been able to save her. The torture of the moment was worth being able to spare her life. He even felt perverse gratitude that Snoke had chosen him for the mission, painful as the outcome had been. No one else would have let the girl live. He was the only one who would have done that for her. 


	3. The Wild Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren was thoroughly punished for failing to bring physical proof of Rey's death to Snoke. Nevertheless, he was glad he was able to spare her life. 
> 
> Unknown to Snoke, Kylo left Rey with a junk master named Plutt in order to hide her. Unfortunately, Plutt is a miserable tyrant in his own right. She waits for her parents to return.

In Jakku, the unpleasant creature named Unkar Plutt ruled a small army of scavengers. As the local junk boss, he traded people food in exchange for whatever they managed to find and bring back that was worth anything. He was the sole judge of how much a particular part or piece of machinery was worth and was able to underpay the scavengers drastically since he had no competition. 

Some of his foragers exchanged their scrap for shelter in addition to food, because if they slept in Plutt's compound, at least they would be safe from reavers and bandits. Most were forced to pay to use his washing tables, too, as he would only accept clean findings. 

The only reason these scavengers didn't starve entirely was that Jakku was situated near the Graveyard of Ships, an enormous ancient battlefield where old wrecked war machines and weapons littered the ground for miles in all directions. Enterprising collectors like Rey were usually able to find sufficient scrap to trade for enough food to make it through another day, but it was a vicious cycle. 

Rey had no choice about growing up under his care, but she moved away from Plutt’s courtyard and Niima Outpost as soon as she was able. She found her own place in the Goazan Badlands in a huge wrecked armored transport that resembled a four-legged creature like a horse, lying on its side. Most people just called them walkers, for the way they had lumbered across the landscape on their legs.

She was able to scavenge a lot from it to use herself and made her living quarters in the thing’s belly, a large section which had previously carried stormtroopers. She was also able to avoid having to pay to use Plutt’s cleaning tables now since she could clean her salvaged findings at home, which saved her valuable resources. It meant a longer journey to get food, but also more privacy and safety, which Rey valued highly, and fewer dealings with her repulsive boss. After she moved out of his compound, she only had to talk to him once a day when she traded her findings for portions. 

After she got away from Plutt, Rey made her own speeder bike from parts she had found in the Graveyard, junk piles, and things she had traded for. It was her most valuable possession and it allowed her to transport large pieces salvage or many parts at a time to her home for cleaning and then to Plutt’s Concession Stand.

She wasn’t worried about anyone stealing her bike either. She not only programmed a fingerprint scanner to lock and unlock it but she also wired it to deliver a shock to anyone who touched it without unlocking it first. She parked it safely hidden in the command section in the walker’s “head” compartment when she was home for the night.

Scavenging was simultaneously tedious and dangerous, but Rey was usually able to find an adequate amount of valuable remnants to trade for enough food to live for another day. 

Rey didn’t know a lot of people, but she gained a reputation as being good with vehicles, whether they were ships in the Graveyard or people’s personal transportation. Sometimes people Rey didn't know approached her when she was cleaning her findings or standing in line to negotiate with Plutt. These strangers asked her to make them things for them or even help them with their own repairs. Rey was leery of people she didn't know, but if she was able to do the deal in the open and she judged it to be on the up and up, she took it. 

Sometimes those who contracted with her paid her in real credits, but more often the pay was something else she traded to Plutt for food, keeping her under his grubby thumb. Eventually, however, Rey came to know a good number of people at Niima Outpost at least casually, and she learned languages easily by simply listening and talking to native speakers.

She wouldn’t call any of those people friends, although she liked some of them well enough. She avoided getting too close to anyone. Too many people would be dangerous to a girl as young and pretty as Rey. As for the others, she didn’t want to get emotionally attached to people. Whenever she parted company with someone, she never knew if she would see them again. Scavenging was a risky job. She never told or showed anyone where she lived. 

She often thought about the parents that had left her with Plutt. She couldn't really remember them, just warm feelings of belonging and vague memories of their faces. Somehow she didn't think that the man who had brought her to Jakku had been her father, although she didn’t remember him well either, and Plutt wouldn't tell her one way or another. She was pretty sure, though, that she remembered him saying that she should wait there until her parents came to get her. So Rey waited. She was good at it. 

For his part, Kylo Ren fared no better than Rey. He was still handsome and powerful, but life held less and less joy for him as time went along. Music no longer made him happy. Food turned to ash in his mouth and drinking did not provide drunkenness nor relieve his thirst. He was unable to rest well, no matter how tired he was or how luxurious his bed. He began to brood and ruminate and often walked alone at night, thinking of things he had done. When he did manage to sleep, he was woken up by terrible nightmares. 

As his sadness grew, so did his temper. It started to come out more frequently when he felt fear or was thwarted, and its expressions became more severe. After being threatened with one of Snoke’s unfair punishments yet again, he smashed the mirror in his chambers with his own hands, cutting them in the process. When reavers wiped out Kylo’s favorite village of humans, who had been leaving him tribute for many years, he killed them personally in retribution. 

During this time, Kylo took to visiting the mortal world more and more often. This was not uncommon for the Fae, as human mythology has shown. Less malevolent Fae contented themselves with souring milk and making themselves invisible in order to pinch babies and make them cry. The more wicked among them poisoned wells and took human babies, leaving changelings in their place for the befuddled parents to fret over.

Kylo, however, went beyond these pranks and joined the Wild Hunt, that mythic procession of supernatural hunters and their Hell-hounds famous for terrorizing mortals

Their favorite season to ride was mid-winter, the darkest, coldest time of year when intense storms often lashed the land. The Hunt would fly behind such storms and intensify their effects, strewing fire and ice in their wake. 

Their preferred sport was frightening mortals. Whenever a man found himself out on a bitter winter night, he greatly feared hearing their eerie hunting horns and the baying of their dogs. Merely seeing these specters could cause a man to die of fright, his heart giving out. Others travelers might find themselves picked up by the ghostly hunters and dropped miles away from their original location. 

Before long, Kylo led the Hunt himself. He resembled a dragon in his shining black armor and helm in the shape of the monster’s head. Straddling an ebon beast in the form of a horse, he wielded a magickal red steel sword, engraved with a spider’s web, that his father had given him years ago. 

Sometimes the object of the Hunt was merely to instill terror. Less frequently, members of the Hunt invaded towns and pubs, stealing food and drink and causing fights. Kylo undertook some hunts with only his knight companions, riding into the Land of the Dead on errands for Snoke or to avenge some slight. He did not balk, however, at hunting for the sheer ecstasy of the ride itself, the wind whipping through the open faceplate of his helm, the warmth of a wild creature under him and the trance that such a ride produced. As the years went on, however, even the Wild Hunt began to pale, and Kylo abandoned its leadership to others. 

With his mounting disenchantment, Kylo’s world shrunk to almost nothing. His former interests no longer appealed to him. He attended neither festivals nor feasts, befriended no clever humans, nor created spectacles to frighten unwitting mortals.

His famed indulgence in luxury tapered off to nothing, and he became ascetic in his lifestyle, eating and sleeping alone and forgoing entertainment of any kind. He felt as if he lived only to serve his Master and the Land of Faerie itself in his capacity as a warrior, sparring by day and training by night. When he was too restless to sleep at all, he read tomes on warfare and strategy, or biographies of famous soldiers. He was almost always victorious in battle and became feared throughout the Land of Faerie. It wasn't enough. 

The only subject other than fighting that still engaged him was the fate of the child who still lived only because of his tenderheartedness. Snoke had often ridiculed Kylo for his compassion, saying it was a weakness. He wanted to find out what had happened to her. If she had survived, she would be an adult by now. Perhaps if she were alive and well, it would give him some hope for the future. Her memory had begun to haunt him like the ghost she was supposed to have become. 

Like him, Rey had no family and he imagined that she might be as lonely as he was. Even surrounded by his own kind, Kylo was unable to forge bonds of love or even friendship. His mentor jealously demanded that he form no attachments so that he would belong to Snoke alone. Kylo's notoriously bad temper and periodic fits of rage also served to drive away anyone who might have been sympathetic. 

Eventually, Kylo decided he had to find out how Rey was doing. It seemed like sparing her was the only good deed he had ever done, and he wanted it to have turned out well. Since he didn’t age, he wasn’t even sure how many years had passed, but he was confident she wasn’t a child anymore. Was she still in Jakku? He hoped that she hadn’t died under the desert sun or let Plutt cripple her spirit. Perhaps she had even found a way to thrive or escape as an adult. He considered how different her life would have been if she had been allowed to grow up naturally with her family in her parents' kingdom. Sometimes he felt the urge to make amends to her for what he had unwittingly subjected her to. Would she be angry if she saw him again? He had to find out.

At first, Kylo only watched the adult Rey in her dreams. Spying on humans had long been an accepted Fae past time, so he felt no guilt. He found her where he had left her, in that little backwater town of Jakku. It was easy for him to make his way into her sleeping mind. He stood back and observed her for a long time. She was still alive and well, but it seemed like her growth had been slightly stunted for some reason, maybe because she was as isolated as he felt.

He saw that Rey was a grown woman now, tall and slender, with long brunette hair in a horsetail and golden skin that was tanned and freckled from the sun. She had an uncontrived beauty and a natural self-confidence. Kylo desperately wanted to make friends with her.

Through his spying, Kylo found that Rey had a rich dream life. She had managed to read a lot of the worthless books she had scavenged as she grew up, so she was familiar with the word “ocean” and had even seen pictures of them. Now, as an adult, she seemed fascinated by them. She liked to imagine one as she tried to sleep, water stretching on all sides to the horizon. She thought it would be similar to the desert of her own land, except the waves would be made of water instead of sand. She had read that large pieces of land were sometimes found in the middle of the waves. Islands, they were called. She tried to visualize what they would be like too. She was very good at creating her imaginary oceans and islands, and Kylo saw the strength of her magick from the success she had envisioning them.

Kylo had been out on the ocean himself and, as he insinuated himself into her dreams, he helped her conjure the sea more vividly in her imagination: the waves blue with white foam; the rocking of a boat; endless water in every direction; the smell of salt in the air, the cry of sea birds. It was still the ocean that she had imagined, he just added his strength to hers to make it more realistic. 

Then he helped her visualize an island, with nice white sand on the beaches instead of everywhere, with clear streams, freshwater pools, waterfalls, and verdant greenery all around. He created a variety of creatures that might inhabit an island and made sure she saw them. Cute ones to make her smile. Scary ones to make her shiver. Strange ones to make her wonder. He supplied her with as much sensory building material as he was able to create for the things she hadn’t experienced before: the feel of the waterfall on her skin, her buoyancy in the ocean, the fish and sea life there.

Now she sighed in her sleep as she dreamed of the ocean and the island, smiling with pleasure at the visions he had helped her create. He saw that she thrived on the novelty of the experience, and she absolutely loved scouting around and examining the various plants and animals. It was so different from her life in Jakku. 

The dreams were enjoyable for both of them, but Kylo hated the scarcity of Rey’s existence in Jakku. He began leaving her little gifts in her dreams: a piece of fruit -- ordinary but unfamiliar -- she had picked from a tree that was still in her hand when she woke up the next morning. A thick blanket she had carried with her on the island that continued to cover her when she woke. He hated the processed foods Plutt gave her, so he focused on giving her things to eat that she would actually enjoy: nuts, jerky, fruit, bread and cakes, a bottle of wine, which would make her quite tipsy in her cozy little home. 

At first, she'd been too suspicious to taste any of the mysterious foods she'd acquired, but eventually, when she had been unable to earn any food for two days, she succumbed. They turned out to be delicious and caused no ill effects, and they were plentiful enough to satisfy her hunger. She was puzzled as to how the items had made the transition from her dreams to her home in the walker but she accepted and enjoyed them anyway. Perhaps she knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Rey had endured such hardship for so many years that Kylo yearned to spoil her with soft things, delicious foods, beautiful music, and lovely things to look at. 

Kylo had become jaded about the riches of his own existence, but he enjoyed watching her, seeing her take pleasure in eating the things he left her. His daily life was so stale as to be almost unbearable. He knew he should stop living through her vicariously. It would be better for him to leave her alone and go his own way. Meeting her physically would only complicate matters, especially with his own emotions being what they were. Feelings of affection would only jeopardize his relationship with Snoke, which depended on complete loyalty and obedience.

He wanted more, though. He needed it. Finally, Kylo decided he had to meet with her in her dreams.


	4. The Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has been waiting for her parents to claim her from Unkar Plutt.
> 
> Increasingly unhappy, Kylo Ren decided to find out what happened to Rey and created an island in her dreams to watch over her.

In the beginning, he only let Rey catch sight of him from far away, so as not to alarm her. The last thing he wanted was to scare her. Kylo tried his best to appear safe and friendly. Instead of his customary black leather, he wore loose silk clothing in soft heather grays and blues. Further, he cast a glamor on himself to appear human and prevent her from recognizing his Fae nature. When she saw him, he smiled at her gently and let her approach him at her own pace, getting closer night by night. 

She didn’t seem sure what to do. She looked as if she wanted to talk to him, but was wary, as well she should be since he was a stranger to her. He hoped that as she got used to him, she would relax in his presence.

At last, when enough nights had gone by that she had almost closed the gap between them, she came walking toward him slowly, shading her eyes from the sun. He squinted and looked down, as if the sun bothered him too, mirroring her, staying in place and allowing her to come to him. 

“Hello?” she called as she approached him where he stood with his feet in the water. 

“Hello,” he answered. “Rey, isn't it?”

She smiled in return. “How did you know?”

“Magick,” he answered vaguely, a sly smile on his face. He could tell that she thought he was being humorous. 

“What’s your name?”

It was only fair to tell her since he had already known hers. “Kylo Ren.”

“I've only seen you here recently.”

She appeared only a little shy, which Kylo took to be a good omen. 

“I've only been here recently,” he replied. “It’s your island. Your ocean. You created them.”

Kylo watched her trying to make sense of it in her mind.

“How do you like them?” he asked. 

“I love them,” she answered, delight breaking over her features. The green plants behind her played up the green in her eyes and she was beautiful. “They’re perfect! I wish I lived here all the time.”

Kylo felt his heart swell with pride that he had helped produce something that gave her joy, even if she had started it herself using her own connection to the web of life’s energy. It was a gorgeous place she had created. She deserved that and more.

“The only part I don't like is being alone all the time,” she continued. “I'm usually by myself when I'm awake. I'd like to at least have friends in my dreams.”

"And here I am," Kylo said as if he were the answer to an unasked question. 

“How is it that you’re here too?” Rey asked as her eyes flicked down to take in his long, well-muscled body.

“I told you. It's magick.” He winked flirtatiously to make her think he was teasing, even though he was not.

She stuttered out a laugh. “Right.”

“You don't mind, do you?” 

She was close enough to him by now that he could have reached out and touched her. 

“No. It's nice to have a friend.”

Rey thought that seeing someone else on the island was strange. What was really weird, though, was that he was as real as anything else there. She certainly hadn’t imagined him, as she had the ocean and the island itself. She hadn’t imagined the food she had been taking home with her either. He _felt_ unlike the animals and other things that hadn’t come directly from her imagination. Why had he appeared here?__

_ __ _

_ __ _

A different woman, living in Jakku under the same hardships Rey had, might have wanted a man to come to take her away, rescue her. The idea had never even occurred to Rey, and she didn’t consider it as a possibility now. Kylo’s presence here was not fulfilling her fantasies. 

From the time she had been able to take care of herself, she had been resolved to stay in Jakku until her parents returned. She wanted to be reunited with them, but she wasn’t waiting for them to save her. If she hadn’t still been hoping for them to come back, she would have left Jakku a long time ago. She was smart and resourceful and it was not beyond her means. 

Rey hadn’t actually been thinking about romantic couplings at all. If she _had_ been fantasizing about the perfect man, however, she would have imagined someone different, someone not quite as large, perhaps. She was tall for a woman, but Kylo was enormous. Her fantasy man could be tall and muscular, but somewhere a little closer to her own size. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

More importantly, she would have picked someone friendlier, happier, perhaps even someone dashing and adventurous. The fact that she got Kylo instead made her wonder if maybe he _was_ real. Could he be a real person coming to the island by dreaming the same way she was?__

_ __ _

_ __ _

After Rey had approached Kylo on the beach and they had said hello, they sat down together on the sand to discuss the situation. 

“I still don’t understand how you’re here,” Rey started logically. “I’m dreaming. I imagined the ocean and this island and they became real. I didn’t imagine you. So where did you come from?”

He didn’t answer, instead asking, “Where do you live in real life?” 

Rey wasn’t sure if she should tell him, but then again, she didn’t have to be specific.

“I live in the desert. Not like this place, where the temperature is nice and there are lots of green plants and so many animals.” She gestured to include the island behind them. “The desert where I live is very harsh. There’s not enough water and not enough to eat. Everyone is in competition with everyone else for anything worth having.”

Kylo’s deep brown eyes regarded her thoughtfully. “Do you live alone?”

“I do,” Rey admitted. “It’s hard to have any friends when you’re all just fighting over scraps.”

“That sounds awful, like you don’t have anyone you can rely on.”

“Exactly,” Rey agreed. “Sometimes I feel like a piece of cloth that has been left out in the sun too long and has gotten little rips in it because it’s worn so thin.” 

Kylo didn’t seem quite so overwhelming like this, sitting cross-legged on the beach. His presence seemed contained, with his bare feet stuck into the sand and a soft expression on his face that went along with his soft-looking black hair. 

“What do you mean by fighting over scraps?”

Rey had to admit that she was a bit impressed with his thoughtful questions. “Hardly anyone has credits where I live. It’s mostly a barter system. Food and shelter are expensive, and if you don’t have credits, you have to find someone who will barter with you to get food. So I salvage scrap from old battleships and weapons, things like that.”

She did like the way he watched her attentively, respectfully. 

“That would give someone a lot of power over you.”

“Yeah, it does,” she conceded. “It’s been a little bit less awful lately though, since I started coming here.”

“How’s that?” 

If she looked at his eyes closely, she could see that they contained a little bit of gold, so they were hazel like hers, but mostly a deep caff brown.

“I can take some of the food here home with me. It’s wonderful.” Her voice expressed her feelings of luxuriousness. “So I get to eat first thing when I wake up at home. It was stuff I’d never seen before too. I was afraid to eat it at first, but it turned out to be a lifesaver.”

A big smile spread over Kylo’s face. “You like it here then?”

“Oh, yes! I love it! I don't have to do anything, no scavenging or cleaning or arguing with Plutt. The temperature is always perfect. Everything here is, the plants and animals and freshwater."

“Who or what is Plutt?” 

She rolled her eyes and groaned. “He’s the one who controls the food. I trade him the bits of stuff I’ve salvaged, but he’s such a skinflint! Everyone hates him.”

Rey was surprised to see Kylo’s eyes darken and his eyebrows knit together. She had intended her statement to be more of a humorous complaint than a ploy for sympathy, but he took it very seriously. 

“But enough about him!” she said, trying to change the subject. “How much do you know about the island? Do you want me to show you around?”

That got a small smile from him. “Yes, please.”

They stood up, brushing the sand off their clothes. 

Rey took him around the island, happily leading him to all the lovely places she had already picked out as her favorites. Kylo kept a respectful distance from her as they walked, not trying to take her hand or put his arm around her, which was a relief. 

First, she took him to a gorgeous waterfall in the middle of the jungle. The water flowed lightly enough that they could stand right under it as it was caught in a small pool that was deep enough for swimming or bathing. It also fed into a stunning, emerald green lake filled with fish. As they continued on, Rey pointed out a magnificent spider’s web, shining with dew between two great trees. Kylo studied it a moment before following her, obviously entranced.

Near the waterfall was a grove of tropical trees where Rey had been trying all the different fruit that grew there. They came in a variety of sizes and shapes and colors: red husky ones she punctured to drink from; small pink sweet ones she peeled and ate whole; oddly-shaped medium-sized ones with a spiky peel that were wonderfully sour. She thought they were all delicious, and it was even better that she could take some of them home with her. She urged Kylo to try them and persuaded him to eat at least several of the hard, purpley-blue, iridescent berries she liked so much. 

White clouds were reflected in the clear aqua water of the atoll in front of them. Rey was able to show her new friend strange animals that he identified as turtles, as well as bizarre shelled creatures which scurried across the sand and splashed in the surf, and large fish which jumped up out of the water before falling back in with a loud splash. Green mountains on the other side of the bay served as an extraordinary backdrop, and the sound of palm trees rustling pleasantly vied with the surf. 

Happy with the addition of a new friend to her island, Rey fell asleep on the sand, then woke to the small interior of the transport walker where she made her home. Her excitement had been building every night as she had gotten closer and closer to the new person on her island, and now it had culminated in actually meeting and talking with him. The idea of having a friend was tantalizing.

The next time they were on the island together, the very next night in Rey’s experience, she showed him the cave. They had toured the rest of the island together, and they paused near the end of the lagoon as evening was coming on. 

“Do you see that dark place in the rock on the shore there? Beneath that old dead tree? It’s a cave. Sometimes you can see it and sometimes you can’t, depending on the level of the water.”

“You mean it’s only visible when the tide is out?”

“The tide? What do you mean?”

So, while they made their way to the cave, Kylo explained why the waves were sometimes so close to shore and sometimes so far away, having to do with the magnetism of the moon and the sun. 

“It always just seemed magical to me,” Rey admitted after she understood. 

“Well, it kind of is like magick,” Kylo agreed. 

The sun itself was going down as they neared the cave, turning the sea and the sky grey and metallic. Light still illuminated the rocky side of the shore, making the upright oval of the cave’s entrance dark and impenetrable. As they approached the opening, surrounded by dark, dried-out vines, Rey got the impression Kylo was apprehensive. 

He was able to enter the cave without stooping, but just barely. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. The floor of the cavern was still wet from the ocean, and it was hotter and more humid than outside on the beach. Kylo fanned himself with his hand, then reached down and touched the moisture underneath their feet. 

“This is amazing,” he said, sounding a little awed. 

“Yeah,” Rey agreed. “I feel drawn to it, but I don’t know what to make of it.”

They stayed close together as they wandered around the edges of the cave, then eventually made their way back out into the cool night air. 

That morning Rey woke up and opened her eyes to the darkness in her own home, leaving her feeling hot and sweaty and clammy all at the same time. She wondered where Kylo was waking up and if he felt the same way. 

As Rey and Kylo surveyed the island together, Rey discovered that Kylo was a font of information about its physical features and wildlife. He had seen a lot of oceans and islands and had read about them a good deal. She reveled in discussing the plants, animals, and geography of the island with him.

For her part, Rey helped Kylo relax and enjoy himself, since he so often seemed tense and on edge. They would sit or lie on the white sandy beaches and watch the sky or stargaze. Usually, the sky was a stunning blue during the day, with pure white clouds that billowed across the horizon like sailing ships. For Rey, that naturally led to looking for shapes in the clouds.

“Look at that big puffy cloud over there,” Rey asked, pointing. “Do you see the dragon?”

“Dragon?” Kylo asked, puzzled.

“Yeah. See the top part is the head, and the part on the other side is the tail, and those things sticking out are its wings.” 

Kylo laughed. “Well, okay, now that you say that, I can kind of see it.” 

“And over those palm trees? That’s a troop transport walker, like the one I live in. See the big body and skinny legs?”

“No, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Kylo seemed to like the game, but he never saw anything until she pointed it out to him: birds and people and buildings, some inspired by real life, and some created only by her imagination. He regularly started the game himself by asking her what she saw. 

Often their casual conversation turned toward their pasts. Kylo wanted to know everything about her childhood and how she lived now. 

“So why are you alone?” he asked as they sat on a rock, lazily opening up and eating round yellow fruit with white flesh and brown seeds. 

“Well, my parents had to leave me with Plutt when I was a little girl. They’re going to come back for me though.” 

Kylo’s silence was a little uncomfortable. “Why did they leave you?”

“I’m not sure. I was small and I don’t remember. I _do_ remember that they were going to be back for me though, and I just needed to wait for them.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

“How long ago was that?” Kylo was picking the seeds out of his piece of fruit and discarding them.

Rey tried to sound casual. “Oh, years. Fourteen or fifteen maybe?” 

Kylo was usually more reticent, but now he kept asking questions. “Why do you think they left you there?”

“Who knows?” Rey shrugged. “Like I said, I was just a kid, so I don’t know. I lived with Plutt and a bunch of other kids at first, but when I got a little older, I found my own place to live. So I could have some privacy.”

“And you don’t have any friends to live with now?”

“It’s hard,” Rey admitted, sighing. “Scavenging can be dangerous. You can fall, or get injured, or get attacked by someone else trying to steal your find. There are steel peckers and other predators you have to watch out for. A lot of people I’ve known are dead. It’s hard to be friends when you don’t know if you’ll ever see the person again.” 

Rey flipped over onto her stomach and played with a shell she’d found. “What about you? Do you live by yourself?”

Rey wanted to see if he would be as evasive as he always was on the subject of his personal life. 

“Not really. I have my own private room, but I live in a big building with a lot of other people. We all work for the king in one way or another, and he wants us close.” 

“Do your parents live there with you?”

“No. They live in a different kingdom. They sent me away when I was a kid. I caused too much trouble.”

“Oh,” Rey said with surprise. It sounded like perhaps they had something in common, that they had both been separated from their parents. “What kinds of things?”

Kylo sounded weary. “I misbehaved a lot. I couldn’t control my temper, hurt other people. Broke things. Started fires. No one liked me. I was different from everyone else. They sent me to live with my uncle, but I didn’t get along with him either. Eventually, the king took me under his wing and made me his apprentice. I felt like he was the first person to ever appreciate me.”

His life sounded drastically different from anything Rey had experienced, but she could see that they had a lot in common too. She couldn’t imagine parents sending a child away for misbehaving. It was very sad, but she didn’t want to pry. She didn’t know why her parents had left her, but she knew it had been in her own best interests, not as a punishment. 

“I always wished I’d had a family, a place where I belonged,” she added wistfully. “More than anything.”

“Me, too.” Kylo’s dark eyes looked sadder than Rey had seen them before.

They let it drop then, and moved on to more cheerful subjects, like the pod races Rey had watched a few times, and a performance by a dance troupe she had seen once. 

A couple of days later, Kylo circled back to the subject. 

“Don’t you ever get mad at your parents for abandoning you the way they did? Alone, without any money?”

“Oh, no,” Rey answered quickly. “They left me with someone. It’s not their fault he didn’t take care of me like he was supposed to.” 

That brought the topic back to Plutt, and Kylo seemed increasingly exasperated to hear how much of a tyrant the man was, and how he had skimped on her care right from the beginning. Rey couldn’t tell if he was outraged she hadn’t gotten enough to eat, or if he simply was unable to believe it, or both.

“You didn’t deserve that,” he told her vehemently. 

“It doesn’t sound to me like you deserved what happened to you either.”

For her part, Rey was enjoying creating a deep friendship for the first time. 

“I’ve never had a friend before,” she informed him one day while they were swimming by the waterfall. 

She wore only her breast band and the small wrapping she usually kept under her leggings.

Kylo was shirtless and in the tight shorts he’d been wearing underneath his regular pants. His body was broad and muscular, and Rey became uncomfortably aware of the muscles of his chest and back, not to mention the outlines she could see in his shorts, which clung wetly to his body. She’d seen pictures of nude men a couple of times, but this seemed different. She found herself alternating between staring at his body and looking away in embarrassment.

Kylo himself seemed to have no such discomfort. He smiled as he stripped down easily, and gave Rey some privacy when she took off her own outer garments. Later she caught him glancing at her appreciatively, and she had to blush and avert her eyes. 

This was Rey’s first opportunity to experience intimacy with someone, emotional or physical. She’d pushed away unwanted hands before in Niima outpost, but now she found herself wondering what it would feel like to have someone she liked touch her...or to touch someone she liked. 

“I haven’t had a lot of friends myself,” Kylo replied bringing her back to the topic, then cutting the conversation short by lunging for her and dunking her head under the water.

She came up sputtering and tried to dunk him back, but his size prevented her from accomplishing it easily. They splashed each other until they grew tired, then crawled up on a rock in the sun to dry off and rest. 

They’d gotten into a lengthy discussion of the island’s environment, such as it was in an imaginary place. 

“So if the island’s predators were removed, then the population of the other animals would increase until they started to starve,” Kylo expounded. “They’d eat too much of the island’s plant life, until the landscape itself changed.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds like everything is connected to everything else,” Rey ventured. 

“Well, sure,” he agreed. “It _is_ all connected. All living things are made of energy, and everything alive creates energy. There’s an energy field - a life force made by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. That’s what binds the world together.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

The theory spoke to Rey at some primal level, articulating something she had perhaps felt, but which had never quite seemed coherent to her. 

“So you and I are bound together?” she asked, feeling a little thrill of excitement in her stomach at the idea.

He turned his head and gave her a little smile. “We are. You think I’m joking, but you have a natural affinity for it. I think your talent in negotiating it helped you survive alone while you were growing up alone. Thrive even. I think it connected us.”

His dark eyes were staring into hers with an unmistakable intensity. 

“Is that why you’re here, with me now?” she asked him.

He sat up and turned his body to face her. “I think it is. That’s one reason we get along so well. We’re both sensitive to it. Not everyone is.”

Later, when she woke up alone in her walker, she thought about the hungry way he had looked at her. She tried to admit, at least to herself, the attraction she felt toward him too.


	5. Magick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo met Rey on the island and they became friends. Now their relationship becomes intimate.

The island itself was wonderful and it had given her something to look forward to after a long day of scavenging, but it made her life harder, too. 

Learning more about the outside world from Kylo made her more curious about it than ever, and more eager to see it for herself. It made her start to question her choices. 

She was smart and capable and she had a lot of skills. She could have left Jakku a long time ago to find better fortunes if she wasn't still waiting for her family to come back. She had always been afraid that they would return for her after she left and the three of them would never find each other again. She had considered the possibility of leaving a message for them with Unkar Plutt, but she did not judge him trustworthy enough to deliver it if they appeared. So she stayed and waited. If it was a choice between a comfortable life and being reunited with her family, she would choose her family every time. 

After one particularly long discouraging day scavenging, during which Rey had been unable to find anything worth trading for any portions at all, she could not help but feel a small flare of resentment at her parents for leaving her in such a harsh environment when she was so young. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t see ever leaving a child of her own under any condition, should she be lucky enough to have one. All that afternoon at the outpost, she stared longingly at transports leaving for other places and wishing she was on one. 

That night, her dreams took her to her island as usual. She ate and drank when she arrived, even though she knew she would still be hungry and thirsty upon waking. Just the pure enjoyment of doing it in her dream was satisfying though. She hadn’t had enough sheer physical pleasure to pass any up now.

When Kylo joined her, he could tell right away how low she was feeling. He walked out of the trees and paused when he saw the look on her face. 

“Rey? Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

The look of concern on his face seemed genuine. Rey hadn’t shared her problems with anyone before, but she felt safe telling Kylo. He didn’t seem to want anything from her, unlike most of the people with whom she interacted.

“I woke up late this morning and I didn’t get out early to do my scavenging. So when I got to the site I had planned to work today, someone else was already there ahead of me, and I didn’t get what I wanted. Then the line was extra long at Plutt’s, and he didn’t give me anything for what I’d brought him. Last week he offered a whole portion for an intact compressor valve, and tonight he wouldn’t even give me a quarter portion for it. So I didn’t get to eat all day.”

“What a lout! I’m sorry. That’s terrible,” Kylo sympathized, and for the first time, he put his arms around her and embraced her gently. It was the first hug she had ever remembered receiving, and it helped her relax as nothing else had before. Her breath calmed and she felt more peaceful and safe than she had in a long time.

The embrace also made her more aware of Kylo’s physicality. His body was much larger than hers, stronger and sturdier. Of course she had understood those facts intellectually, but lately, she had started to notice the attractiveness of his face and physique, the grace of his movements, the warmth in his eyes when he spoke to her, his deep voice and the pleasant rhythm of his speech. 

She wrapped her arms around him in return. It felt good to touch him, to have him so close to her.

“Sometimes I just wish I could stay here with you forever,” she whispered into his chest, broad and solid against her cheek. 

“Me, too,” he whispered back just loud enough for her to hear. “Me, too.”

The gap between them closed that night. Somehow, before, the idea of touching had seemed confusing and a little scary. Now it felt natural, right. 

They began to hug and kiss each other on the cheek when they met for the first time each night, and often finished the evening in one another’s arms. They held hands when they walked together along the beach, and Rey sometimes felt Kylo touch her on the small of her back when she was in front of him, guiding her. Their intimacy became deeper, more intense, more vulnerable. 

Kylo would put his arm around her when they reclined on the beach looking at the stars, and she rested her head on his arm or his chest as they did so. He felt so solid and steady under her, like she could depend on him for anything. 

“Have you had sex a lot before?” she asked him one night when she was feeling braver than usual. They were lying on the warm sand, and he had tucked her close into the side of his body. 

“No,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “Not really.” He sighed deeply and kissed the top of her head. She melted at his touch and snuggled into him. 

“I have known many high born ladies. They were usually happy to have me escort them to dinners and dances, but they weren’t interested in me. Most of them wanted something from me. They wanted to make someone else jealous. Or make their mothers think they were with a nobleman instead of a squire. Or they wanted something I could give them. But they never wanted to talk the way you and I do.”

“They sound very boring if they didn’t want to talk to you,” Rey said quietly, but with utmost sincerity. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” 

He rolled over on his side to face her. “No one else has ever thought so.” His eyes seemed sadder than they should have been, his expression mournful. Rey could feel the pain behind his admission. 

Her first instinct was to make light of it to lessen the tension she felt, but instead, she relaxed and returned the look he was giving her. “I do.” 

“Actually, I’ve had sex. A lot,” Kylo blurted out.

Rey blushed a little. 

“And it was...pleasurable. But no one ever cared about me. They thought I was handsome and I was good in bed, but not someone to be serious about. Not someone to care about.”

“I care about you,” Rey whispered. 

“I care about you too,” Kylo echoed her. 

Despite the vulgar, unwanted fumblings she had endured growing up, Rey had never kissed on the lips before. When Kylo slowly inclined his head closer and pressed his mouth into hers, she thought that she had never experienced anything as soft as his lips. She wanted to feel them on her own lips for the rest of time, so that life continued all around them except for this kiss, which lasted forever. His mouth opened and closed on hers softly, repeatedly, as if he were eating some delicious piece of delicate fruit. She opened her mouth to him and his tantalizing tongue, which tasted of something honeyed and mysterious. She felt excitement rising in her chest, but she didn’t know if it was a good kind of excitement or just anxiety.

The moment and the kiss ended, and they both pulled back just a little to look at each other. 

“You haven’t been with anyone before, have you?” Kylo asked. 

Rey shook her head, embarrassed. 

“It’s fine. There’s no rush. Let’s just take it slow, all right?”

“Okay,” Rey agreed, feeling a little sheepish. 

“No, it’s good,” he assured her, raising a hand to stroke her cheek. “I want you to be ready and enjoy everything. We have as much time as we need.”

One night, Kylo fashioned a hammock between two palms. Rey swung in it gently and Kylo leaned against one of the trees. 

“What were your parents like? I mean, you haven’t seen them in years, is that right?”

As usual, he grew a little morose when she brought the subject up. “No, I haven’t. And I don’t want to. They didn’t want me. I was too much for them to handle.”

“I know you told me that you got in trouble, but what did you do that was that bad?” she asked in a hushed voice. “I mean, where I grew up, I saw children kill each other in fights. They helped their families attack and raid people. It seemed like their parents wanted them to do it.”

Kylo was unable to meet her eyes. “They probably did, in Jakku. Not so much where I lived. My parents were nobility. Very proper. They always had the right clothes and just the right thing to say. Everyone loved them and wanted to be around them. They didn’t have time for me.”

“So… you said you started fires, hurt people.”

“Burning things down was an accident, most of the time,” Kylo confessed. “I used to get so mad and I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I hurt people. That was usually on purpose. I was a bratty kid. Hard to control.”

“It sounds to me like maybe you needed more attention.”

“Well, I didn’t get it,” he said bitterly, hands curling into fists. “My mother and father had important duties at court, and they left me alone or with tutors or other children. It didn’t turn out well. I guess I wanted their attention, and it seemed like the only time I got it was when they were angry with me.”

Rey thought for a minute. “I can understand that. I see people act that way with Plutt, the ones who live in his compound. They push him until he gets mad, even though they know better.”

Kylo seemed to be almost lost in his thoughts. “My parents wanted me to be perfect. I wanted to be perfect too, but I couldn’t be. So when I wasn’t, when I failed my lessons or was sent to bed without dinner or something, I got angry and broke things. My parents _hated_ that. They said I was just a brute. I think they were afraid of me.”__

_ __ _

__

Rey had nothing to say to that. Kylo continued on.

“No one liked me. Not the kids or the adults or the tutors. They said I was ugly. That my ears stuck out too much, and my nose was too big. I was too tall. I resembled some kind of a thug instead of a nobleman. The other kids told me I looked like a rat. They called me repulsive.”

“Oh, no!” Rey cried. “I can’t believe that. You’re a very nice looking man!”

“I wasn’t when I was growing up,” Kylo lamented, chuckling sadly. “I was tall and skinny, with dark hair and brown eyes. A long face. Ugly.”

Rey got out of the hammock and went to him, putting her arms around him and leaning her head against his chest. “They sound really mean. Kids are mean, I know, but it seems like the adults could be more compassionate.”

“They weren’t. In the end, it didn’t matter though. When things got bad, he sent me to live with my uncle. Once I got away from there, people weren’t so mean to me anymore. People in the court where I live now aren’t as critical about appearance. Lots of them are ugly, too.”

“What did your mom do when your dad sent you away?”

“It was her brother I went to live with. I think she believed it was for the best. Supposedly he knew how to ‘handle’ boys like me, but he didn’t. I found out that he had committed treason. The king asked me to kill him, and I did it.”

He turned his face toward her now, to see how she judged him. 

The expression on her face was one of empathy. “That sounds really hard. Really painful.”

“It was,” Kylo agreed. He had wrapped his arms around her too. “It was awful. I didn’t want to kill my uncle. I mean, we weren’t very close, but he’d been kind to me, at least a little bit. When I found out the things he’d done, though, I could see why the king wanted him dead. And killing him proved my loyalty. The king made me a knight. He taught me things. And then I became his apprentice, his heir. If he ever dies, I will become king after him.”

Rey thought the way Kylo phrased it was a little odd, but she decided it wasn’t important. “You sound like you’re sorry.”

He shifted uncomfortably, his fingers worrying at the bottom of her tunic. “I am sorry. I mean, I knew I had to do it if I wanted to stay there, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to. I knew I couldn’t go back to my parents. I did what I had to do.”

Rey’s hands stroked his back soothingly, making gentle circles in the soft cloth. “I don’t know if I could do that. If I could kill someone. Would you do things differently now?”  
“I would,” he answered quickly. “But I didn’t feel like I had any choice at the time. Now my parents won’t ever forgive me. No one in my uncle’s court trusts me. People hate a kin-slayer. My master keeps me safe, but I don’t have anyone else.”

“So you’re alone, except for him?” Rey suddenly realized that was something they had in common. They were both stood apart from everyone else.

“Not… alone. I just don’t have friends or family. I’m a knight. I lead King Snoke’s armies. A good leader doesn’t need people to like him. He just needs people to respect him.”

It sounded to Rey like he was defending the king in some way. 

“It’s okay,” Rey reassured him as he nuzzled into her hair. “Now we have each other.”

Rey asked him about the battles he had fought, the enemies he had slain. Kylo was proud of being a warrior, and he had many entertaining stories to tell her. 

“So I had to disarm the giant first. His sword was five feet long, but he wielded it like it was nothing. So I struck the flat of it as hard as I could, over and over. It vibrated like a bell and after a few minutes, I was able to knock it out of his hand.”

“You used it like a bo staff then?”

“Exactly,” he answered enthusiastically. “I swept it behind his knees and he fell at once.”

“I have a staff I use in Jakku. I’ve fought off a lot of marauders with it.”

“Really? I’d love to spar with you sometime.”

“We could make our own staves here, from the trees.”

Kylo disappeared into the brush for a minute, then reappeared with two wooden staves. 

Rey’s mouth fell open in surprise. “And you just happened to have those here?”

“Not at all,” he teased back. “It’s magick. Now, do you really think you can take me on using just a stick?”

“I _know_ I could,” she countered enthusiastically. “I trained myself for years. I’ve disarmed men bigger than you.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

Rey was bluffing. She knew he could beat her, but she planned to give him a good effort anyway.

Then the next day, he showed up hiding a gift behind his back: a practice-sword. 

Rey was delighted when he gave it to her. “A saber? I’ve never held a real sword before!” she exclaimed happily as she waved the wooden blade around her at the nearby greenery. 

“You still haven’t,” he baited her. “That’s just a practice sword.”

Her excitement was undiminished. After she had fun for a few minutes, she tried her old training routine with it. 

Kylo laughed. “You’re a natural. But you’re holding it wrong.” He approached her from behind, brushing her back with his chest, and adjusted the handle in her hand. “Like this.” 

Kylo backed away when she corrected her grip and began attacking palm trees with even more energy. “You’re right. This is definitely better!”

Rey was an eager student and loved learning a new method of defense from Kylo. Feeling his body against hers, front to back, as he guided her sword arm, made her blood race. Their swords clashed on each other when they fought, much as their bodies did when they grappled, sweaty and panting.

Afterward, they bathed in the pool by the waterfall. Kylo had stripped to his small pants again, and Rey asked him about his various battle scars. He didn’t appear self-conscious until she asked him about one on his back that branched strangely. She reached up to trace it, asking, “This one looks odd. How did you get it?”

His face blanched, and his casual manner became somber. “That was from a punishment,” he said, averting his eyes.

Her fingers followed the outline as it split multiple times. “But what made it? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Kylo had to clear his throat before he could speak. “You’ve seen lightning, haven’t you? King Snoke uses a form of it as punishment.”

Rey’s mouth dropped open. “How -”

He turned to face her, placing his hand over her own and moving it to a similar scar on his muscular leg. “This was the first one he gave me. I had interrupted him when he was chastising me, and this was my punishment. I never interrupted him again.”

He made eye contact with her and released her hand, which began to wander over the record of the many injuries inflicted on his body.

Rey felt sad for all of them, each pain that had he had endured. Kylo’s poor body had more marks than she expected, but it was still beautiful, the skin pale and smooth and warm under her fingers, his voice low in her ears. She felt a sense of anticipation building inside her, felt the wetness between her legs, as she started to kiss each scar as Kylo led her to them. 

Finally, he took her hand in his and led her to the small beach next to the pool. He lay down and then pulled her to the ground with him. She lay in the comfort of his arms, watching the stars as Kylo kissed her throat and her shoulders. She felt relaxed, calm. It was, after all, only a dream. She enjoyed the comforting warmth of his enormous body and the way his hands stroked her arms softly. 

She turned to Kylo and nestled even closer, nuzzling into his neck and stroking his chest. She heard him sigh as he turned his body towards hers and brought it even closer, skin to skin. It made her feel cared for and wanted and safe, for the first time that she could remember.

As a child, Rey had played games with the other younglings in Plutt’s compound. They played show-and-tell and touched each other’s bodies shyly. When she got older and began developing physically, she had endured unwanted hands on her body before she had pushed them away, but it had felt nothing like this. 

She had admired attractive men and women she at seen at Niima Outpost, but she had never pursued any encounters, nor accepted any requests from others. It had seemed too intimate, too invasive. She hadn’t been willing to share the location of her home with anyone, much less her body. 

Now Rey felt as if she were in a dream. She knew that she was, in fact, dreaming, which gave her a sense that there would be no consequences to her actions, and it emboldened her. All dangerous, forbidden things are allowed in dreams. She could do want she wanted, ask for what she desired, she thought to herself as she took off her remaining clothing.

When his hands settled on her waist, she brought them up to her breasts, impatient. Kylo chuckled softly, pleased by her eagerness for his touch. He stroked them lightly, then followed her lead when she squeezed to show him how she wanted him to do it. She gasped as a spike of pleasure went through her. His thumbs brushed against the nipples firmly until they were creased and taut. 

She became aware of the way she was arching her back to press her breasts into his hands, and she heard a small sigh of satisfaction from him. The pressure of his thumbs against her nipples increased until finally she felt him pinch them pleasurably, replaced almost immediately by the exquisite pressure of his lips, sucking on them.

He paused long enough to say, “Tell me if you want me to stop,” and moved on to the other breast, making them feel wonderfully tender.

She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to go on, perhaps more than anything. She wanted to feel him between her legs, where she was wet and aching for him to touch her. She wanted him inside of her in a way she had never felt before. 

Kylo's hands trailed down past her waist to her hips, and the way his fingers dug into her skin made her spine arch and skin flush. One hand stroked its way down her stomach toward the place where her pleasure was concentrated. The tension built almost unbearably until his fingers finally pressed between her legs. She moaned as her entire body jerked in reaction to just his touch, then his fingers slipped further down and through her folds to gather up some of the wetness there to continue stroking her. She was more aroused than ever.

Soon Kylo stopped teasing Rey and began to move with more of a purpose. Then, to her surprise, she felt the gentle graze of his hair on the insides of her thighs, as his hands parted her inner lips and he pressed his tongue into her. It was indescribably delicious, the way his mouth went to her clit and sucked it inside as his fingers traced her soft skin. Everything slipped away except for the feel of his mouth on her, and her consciousness narrowed down just to that part. It was more delicious than anything, any food or drink or drug she knew. Then all the muscles of her body seized ecstatically, in a way that was overwhelming and strange, yet somehow perfect.

Kylo kept his mouth on her as she shuddered her way through her climax. Afterward, she instinctively tried to push his head away as the sensations became too intense. He laughed softly, then began to kiss up the skin of her stomach and chest until he returned to her lips. She thought about how wonderful his mouth had felt on her and how smoothly it pressed against her own mouth now. She tasted herself and it was like the sea.

Kylo took care of her during her afterglow, caressing her face and hair, kissing her softly and whispering quietly in her ear. 

When she had returned to herself enough, he asked her if she had liked it. 

She wasn’t able to tell if he was looking for praise or not, but she had honestly loved it and she told him so.

“Do you want to keep going?”

“Yes," she answered. 

Theoretically, she knew what was supposed to come next. She’d even seen a few pictures of it, but she hadn’t expected the experience to be so all-encompassing, overwhelming.

“I want to be inside you,” he told her softly, “but I need to prepare you first. Tell me if you want me to stop or go slower.”

“Okay,” Rey agreed, not completely sure what he meant, but feeling cared for and pampered and cherished.

She felt his hand moving slowly down her body again, his touch enticing as he looked into her eyes. 

“You’re so wet,” he murmured as he felt her sex, sounding pleased. 

He slipped his finger inside her gently, and she realized that was what she had wanted. It filled the hollow place inside of her. It felt different from the way his mouth had, but it was good, so good. He began to move it back and forth inside, producing waves of pleasure and satisfaction underneath her growing excitement. He gave her time to adjust before slipping in another finger, letting her body open to accommodate it before beginning to push his long fingers in and out of her. She felt like a flower blossoming in the warm night air of the island.

When Kylo slid another finger yet inside her, it felt so good that her inner muscles tightened involuntarily. 

“Are you still okay?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she stammered out, wanting this to never stop, but beginning to be dizzied by what was happening.

She looked into his whiskey-brown eyes as he stroked the inside of her and expanded his fingers, producing another unfamiliar sensation. His gaze split between her eyes and the place where his hand moved inside of her, his pupils big and dark. He was smiling slightly, unconsciously. The look on his face helped calm her confusion.

He pulled his fingers out and up to spread the moisture of her body along her soft folds again. She felt the intensity of every move that either one of them made and it was starting to be too much. 

“We can wait,” he told her, looking back into her eyes and seeing her feel overwhelmed. “There's no rush.” 

“Okay,” she agreed, a little breathy. “Let's wait then. It's just... so much.” 

She felt like both her brain and body had been overloaded and she sighed in relief that they would be pausing, even as she wanted more.

She became aware of the way Kylo's cock was pushing against the material of his pants. “But you... I can do something for you.”

“You don't need to,” he reassured her. “I can take care of -”

He stopped mid-sentence as she reached for him and rubbed him through the silk of his pants. He moaned low in his throat, which she took to be a good sign as she pulled the drawstring and his pants fell away.

Rey saw his cock for the first time, hard and straining for her.

Rey caressed him tentatively, enjoying the feel of the velvet skin of the crown, and the way the soft skin of his shaft moved up and down with her touch. The texture made her want to stroke him more. She placed his hand over her own, and said, “Show me what you like.”

His cock twitched beneath her and he groaned. “No one has ever said that to me before,” he told her. “No one ever asked me what I wanted.”

He looked down at their joined hands on his member. 

“They should," Rey said as she watched their hands begin to move together, running up and down, then twisting about the head when they reached the end. She concentrated on the movement, wanting to learn it perfectly and wondering what it felt like to him. 

“Now let me see if I can do it by myself.”

The expression on his face would have been reward enough even if she hadn't loved what she was doing. Usually, Kylo looked as if he felt self-conscious, reluctant to display his emotions, but now a giddy smile showed her his white teeth. 

She continued the way he had shown her. After a few strokes, he was breathing hard and a white liquid dripped from the tip.

"I won't last," he whispered to her, as if her own pleasure depended on his and he didn’t want to short change her.

“Then go ahead and come,” she told him as she sped up. His hips began to jerk, and ropes of his spend spurted out as sounds of ecstasy left his mouth.

When he started to soften, she removed her hand and brought it up to her mouth, licking it experimentally. It tasted bitter, and the consistency was strange, but it had been part of him, and she accepted it as such. When she looked up at him, he was watching her hungrily.

By then, he had picked up his shirt to clean himself up before setting it aside and retying the drawstring of his pants. 

They curled up together the way they had been before, with her head on his shoulder. 

“Was that the first time you've done that?” he asked as his fingers stroked her neck. 

“Yes,” she admitted. “No one has ever touched me the way you did either.” 

“You did very well.” 

She felt herself color in pleasure at his words. 

“It will be a little different in the real world,” he said, reminding her that they were still in her dream. 

It was a bit of a sad realization for them both, but it gave Rey a moment of pause, thinking how she didn’t know him in the real world.

“Rey,” he said, his voice tentative, “have you ever thought of leaving Jakku? Maybe we could be together in real life too. In the waking world.”

She knew the idea shouldn't have surprised her. She felt that somehow it had not occurred to her before because it was disturbing and she didn’t want to think about it. She felt herself wanting to contract away from him.

“No, I can't,” she said. “I'm waiting for my family to come back. Besides, you live somewhere else. Would you even be able to find me?” 

“I would,” he answered firmly, but her pointed questions seemed to quiet Kylo, and they relaxed as they were for a while, until Rey fell asleep and woke up in her desert home back in Jakku. 


	6. Jakku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's relationship with Kylo became physical. They become even closer and Kylo escalates the situation.

Rey woke up thinking of the night before and wondering if she'd be sore between the legs, but she wasn't. She didn’t know how much of what happened in her dreams was real. She had been able to bring back some of the things she’d picked up on the island, but that had been all. She’d never felt hungover after drinking there, and now her body didn’t feel any different than it usually did, except for being a bit aroused. So Rey went about her day as she normally did. Kylo's offer to take her somewhere else worried at something in the back of her mind. She refused to let it distract her, however, until her work was done and she was back home in her walker. 

Some home, she thought, looking around. She had done her best putting it together, but it was kind of pathetic really. Her helmet, her doll, her plant, her hammock that wouldn’t hold two people. It was hard to save any credits when she wasn’t making any. If she put her mind to it now, she might be able to get transport out of Jakku in exchange for work. As soon as the thought went through her mind, though, she dismissed it. She had waited for her parents all this time. If she left now, all that time would have been wasted and she would have been a fool. It would be too much to bear. 

Her preoccupation with her parents struck her as odd. She would have thought she would be thinking about her sexual exploration with Kylo the previous night. 

She didn't have any conflicted feelings about that, though. She knew she wanted it and was actually looking forward to it. It was a much more pleasant thing to consider as she laid down to sleep than the possibility of leaving Jakku. Much less threatening. 

Kylo was already on the island when she found herself there. This time he had a nice thick blanket spread out on the sand, with pillows and towels and a few other little things she didn't look at very closely. She only had eyes for him. 

They kissed hello and wrapped their arms around each other. It felt so magical to Rey to have found someone who cared about her. 

“I thought of you all day,” Kylo told her. “I couldn't wait to see you tonight.” 

“Me neither,” she agreed, although it wasn't strictly so. She'd been too busy worrying about leaving Jakku to do more than look forward to it vaguely. “Can we do it again?”

Kylo laughed in relief. “Of course. We can do it as much as you like.”

He opened the wine he had brought and handed her the bottle. 

“Don't drink too much. I just want you to relax, not get drunk.”

She giggled before she tipped the bottle up, then handed it back to him for a swig. The wine was slightly sweet and she liked it, not that she had anything to compare it to except other wines Kylo had brought her.

“Actually, I thought about my parents a lot today,” she said, broaching the subject as bravely as she could. She felt her shoulders tense up just thinking about it. Kylo noticed and reached over to massage her neck and back. 

“What were you thinking?”

Rey became more somber. “I think they loved me. But if that’s true, I don't know how or why they abandoned me. Maybe they didn’t really love me.” 

Kylo took her hand and sat on the blanket, then pulled her down with him. She settled and leaned against him as he put his arm around her. He made her feel loved and desired with the way he took care of her and focused on what she was feeling. The bond they had created the night before still drew them together. 

“I'm sure that your parents loved you,” Kylo started, brushing a stray hair away from her face. “Lots of different things might have happened to prevent them from coming back. Maybe they left you in Jakku to keep you out of danger that they couldn’t avoid. Maybe they got killed. Maybe that's why they haven’t come back.”

“I know,” Rey conceded. “But what about the man who dropped me off? Why didn't he come back?”

Kylo looked abashed for a moment. “Maybe he was killed too. Maybe he didn't realize what a brute Plutt was. Maybe he was under the impression your parents came back to get you right away.”

“Maybe,” Rey sighed as she leaned her head against him. “What would I do if they were dead? I mean, they're not," she said, quickly backtracking as she felt a small stab of panic at the very idea. "But just suppose?" 

Kylo turned to kiss her forehead with those soft lips of his, reassuring her.

"Well, you'd grieve. But you'd go on. They'd want you to. Especially since they loved you. They would want you to go on and enjoy life. They'd want you to live in a place you liked and to do the things you wanted to do. What do you want to do besides be with your parents again? See the universe? Have adventures? Fall in love? Maybe have children of your own? If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be?”

Rey was speechless for a moment. She had thought about many of those things, but she had never thought in terms of doing them _instead_ of reuniting with her parents. They were things she had dreamed about doing with them, or with their blessing at least, after they had been reunited...sort of vaguely. Actually, she hadn't ever thought about how things would go exactly. She grimaced, realizing her error, and feeling stupid for doing so. __

_ __ _

Kylo sensed something was wrong. “It's alright if you haven't figured it out. You have time to decide. I just thought perhaps you'd been looking forward to something in particular.”

Rey felt as if something was moving around inside her stomach rather painfully. “I don't want to talk about that now. Can't we just...”

He smiled at her. “Yes, of course.” 

Rey had laid her head against his chest. He shifted her body a little to kiss her. She still felt tense, so he kissed the tip of her nose to make her smile then handed the bottle of wine back to her. 

“I'm sorry I brought up something you don't want to talk about.”

Rey took the hint and swallowed a gulp of wine, relaxing a little. “It's okay. I'd just rather… do this right now.”

Her smile and her voice were hesitant, so he encouraged her to drink once again before he took the bottle back and drank some himself before setting it aside in the sand. 

Rey turned to face him. When she was that close to him, she could detect the faint smell of his body, sandalwood and some kind of spice, she thought. She still felt a bit uncertain, despite her excitement. He laid his strong hand against her cheek and bent down to kiss her, putting her at ease. She tasted a little of the wine in his mouth, in addition to his natural sweetness. Feeling reassured, she relaxed more fully and responded, opening her mouth to him and flicking her tongue against his. He groaned a little at her tease and kissed her more deeply, his hand sliding down to her breast. She inhaled sharply when he squeezed her hard, the way she had shown him.

“Does that hurt?” he asked anxiously.

Rey put the palm of her hand against his cock through the thin material of his pants and applied firm pressure. 

“I like it.” 

She could see from his face that he liked it too.

“Then that's all that matters.” His voice was like the sound of some exotic instrument that was being played just for her.

He squeezed even a bit harder, drawing a small cry of both pleasure and pain from her, and she felt him stiffen beneath her hand. Then Kylo helped her pull off both her shirt and her shorts, beneath which she was naked for him. He inhaled sharply as his eyes took her in.

In return, Rey moved to untie the drawstring of his pants as he shucked off his shirt. Her hand was on him immediately, wanting to experience the strange sensation of silk over steel again. She started to caress him as she had the night before, with firm slow strokes. On instinct, she leaned down and kissed the tip. He was hot and silky and tasted slightly sweet, like the fruit on the island.

He pulled away gently, saying, “If you do that, we won’t be able to do anything else. Let’s save that for later.”

Rey realized she had no idea how much time they would need to wait after he came, so she followed his request. 

She could see in his eyes that he was creating the experience more for her pleasure than his. He wanted to lead her in this, and she would let him. 

“Lie down.” He put his hand on her chest and pressed gently until she was lying on her back.

He began to move her legs apart from each other. “I want to see you,” he said, his voice hoarse. She did as he asked, less hesitantly than she had the night before, feeling more comfortable. She couldn’t remember ever feeling cool night air against her bare skin before. 

Kylo traced the opening between her legs, and she knew he could tell how wet she was already. It allowed him to slip a finger inside her more easily than he had the previous night. He looked up at her face to check her reaction before continuing. She nodded slightly to encourage him. The sensation was new, but arousing to her. 

He glanced back down at her sex and pushed a second, then a third finger inside, as he had done the night before. She was distracted for a moment by the feel of her inner space expanding, then she met his sable eyes again and she felt reassured. He moved his fingers in and out, watching her face as she grew more eager. 

Kylo cleared his throat before he spoke, sounding a little nervous. “I think it will be better if you come before we try this. Is that okay with you?”

Rey felt hot and excited and a little bit confused, but she nodded and told him yes. 

Kylo pulled his fingers out of her and put one on her clit. His fingertip was already wet, and it felt incredible as it circled deliciously against her. He reached up and pinched her nipple, hard, making all the muscles of her body tighten as she felt her climax approach. He sped up until she threw her head back and made small noises as her orgasm shook through her. 

When she opened her eyes again, Kylo was looking at her with a special intensity. 

“Now?” he asked her, his voice growing tight. 

“Yes,” she answered breathily, watching him with fascination as he guided himself to her opening.

She wasn’t sure what she was feeling at first as the head of his cock pressed carefully into her. It felt good though, and she tipped her hips to encourage him to enter her more fully. When he pushed further into her, she had a brief moment of pain, then everything felt good again. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered anxiously. “I wasn’t going to…”

“It’s okay,” she assured him, lifting her hips again experimentally. 

“You feel amazing,” he told her as his face pulled closer to hers. He kissed his way down her jaw and neck and sucking on the little marks he had made the previous night, which felt more intense than they had originally. “Are you ready?”

She nodded, feeling her anticipation rising, licking her lips and wriggling beneath him. He pulled most of the way out, slowly, deliberately, keeping himself under control, then began thrusting at a measured pace. Rey thought that he would have preferred to go harder, faster, but was deferring to her comfort and pleasure.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said, confirming her suspicions. 

As she felt herself moving toward another orgasm, she gave over to her arousal more, moving her hips against him and clutching at his back. He seemed to like it when she applied her nails and began to scratch. His rhythm stuttered and he groaned, which Rey took as a good sign. 

“I’m… going to come,” he gasped out before sinking his teeth into the muscles between her shoulder and her neck. 

That sensation alone would have brought her to her own orgasm, but the idea that he was marking her, embedding himself within her skin, made it much more intense. A little scream came out of her mouth and that seemed to make him come all the harder. 

He stayed inside her, resting on his elbows as she reached up to place the palm of her hand over the center of his chest, watching his face intently. He was able to repeat the gesture to her before rolling off onto his side and slipping his arm around her waist. 

“Fuck, I love you,” he sighed. 

Then “Fuck, I didn’t mean to say that.” He buried his face in her neck. 

Rey could feel her own heart pounding, her thighs trembling from the aftershocks. 

Hearing him say that jolted her. Rey didn’t think she could say it back, not just yet. She brushed aside her discomfort by repeating a joke she had overheard couples say to each other in Jakku, “It’s okay. I won’t hold you to it.”

A bark of laughter escaped him as he pulled away from her neck. Rey was relieved that he didn’t look angry or hurt. 

After they had recovered a bit more, they used the towels he had brought to clean up, and she rolled over to put her head on his shoulder. 

“God,” she sighed as she stroked his face. “That was intense.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, watching her. “I haven't been with anyone in a long time.”

“I guess you’ve been with a lot of women before,” she said giddily, not in complete control of what she was saying or doing, any more than he seemed to be. 

He was serious now. “No one who has moved me the way you do,” he told her as he brushed tendrils of hair away from her face. His own dark hair was hanging in his eyes as well. She reached over, but instead of pushing it away, she simply ran her fingers through the wonderful luxury of it. 

“Your hair is so soft," she marveled as if the texture of it was somehow miraculous and utterly unbelievable. "I love it." She didn’t know if she said that in lieu of saying she loved him, but he seemed to understand. 

Rey’s happiness lasted through the next day, which turned out to be easier than usual. Kylo was a pleasant memory in the back of her mind, and she found herself thinking of him often and covertly fingering the marks he had left on her neck. She had also been successful with her salvaging, and for once she had gotten a good amount for her efforts: more than a full portion. She was looking forward to seeing Kylo again tonight after she went to sleep. 

The sun was setting, and it painted the loveliest colors on the clouds as it went down. The light was softer, making everything Rey saw seem sharper, clearer, more three-dimensional. Some of the locals called that time of day “Golden Hour,” although that might just be because the desert was cooling down and most people had finished their work for the day. They were mostly relaxing a bit, perhaps drinking or imbibing some other relaxant. The appetizing smells of food cooking drifted through the air, competing with the flavored smoke from a popular brand of incense. 

She had been focused on getting home and eating when she had a sudden, almost out-of-body experience: she spotted Kylo, in the flesh, across the plaza. For just a moment she thought she was imagining him. It would be normal, considering how much she wanted to be with him. He was really there, though, even if she might have looked past him the first time she saw him. She had been tired, but the understanding that he had truly come for her was revitalizing. No one had ever come for her before. 

He looked different in his dark clothes, and something about him was just slightly off. She didn’t care, feeling elation at his sudden appearance. She changed the direction she had been going to head straight toward him, smiling and waving in a low-key way as she went. She didn’t want to draw attention in the vicinity of so many people, but she couldn’t help moving somewhat faster. She was excited at the idea of taking him home and sharing her things with him. 

Rey didn’t even entertain any negative thoughts about the reason why he was there. It had to be something positive. If she had been less of an optimist, she would never have survived Jakku in the first place and given up long ago. 

He smiled at her in return and began coming towards her as well. 

When they met in the middle, she was reluctant to hug, once again to avoid undue attention, but Kylo had no such reservations and swept his arms around her. Rey’s heart sang. He was there. For _her._

_ __ _

__

“Kylo,” she whispered when they parted. “How are you here? _Why_ are you here?”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

“I’ll tell you, but can we go somewhere private to talk?”

“Of course.”

She took his hand to lead him to a spot that was more out of the way. When they reached a rickety abandoned landing bay, it was quiet and deserted. They embraced again, with both more tenderness and more passion this time. 

His dark eyes seemed like luminous amber, and his skin appeared to have some kind of subtle glow from within, neither of which she had noticed before.

Tired and a little footsore, Rey sat down on the sand and leaned back against a wall. He followed her to the ground but sat facing her instead with his back against the wall, so they could look at each other as they spoke. 

“I'm not sure I believed you were real,” she confided. “I mean, believed it when we were together. But when I woke up in the morning, sometimes I suspected I was just going mad."

He looked down, seeming a little awkward. “I had to see you, Rey. Not on the island. Here, in the real world. It's important.” His dark eyes searched hers. 

So many thoughts were suddenly swirling around Rey’s head that she couldn’t make any sense of them. “The real world?”

“Yes,” he said emphatically. “Where I can touch you and we don’t have to part at the end of the night.”

She felt dizzy at the sudden upending of all her assumptions about him. 

“Why are you here?”

“Because I want to be with you. In reality. All the time, not just in dreams.”

“But… if you could come here all along, why...why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“I had to be sure I wouldn’t be doing more harm than good. But now I’m sure. And I don’t want to live without you.”

“I don’t think I understand what’s going on. I have so many questions.”

“I’ll answer them as well as I can. But you look tired and hungry. Is there an inn or a place to stay here? So we can be by ourselves?”

Rey had never told anyone where her home was, much less taken someone there. But this was Kylo. She felt safe with him. He had never harmed her in any way, never taken advantage. His motives weren’t completely clear to her, but he had only given to her so far, never taken. After she had accepted him, there were many times when she had been at his mercy if he wanted to abuse her in some way, and he never had. She felt that they were already bonded.

And yet a soft voice in her mind whispered that she had already been compromised by her feelings for him, and her sexual appetite only made her more vulnerable. She hushed the voice, telling herself not to worry. He wasn’t going to leave her the same way everyone else had. He had come here for her.

“Okay, “ she said, calming herself. “You could come home with me. It’s not much, and it’s tiny, but I could share my portion with you. I got a full one today.”

“I would love to. How far away do you live?” 

Rey smiled, feeling somewhat more confident. She was on her turf now. 

“Kind of far. But don’t worry. We can take my bike!”

Kylo looked suitably awed, although he pretended not to be. “Where’d you get this old beater?” 

“I made it myself. From scratch,” she shared proudly. “It’s really halfway between a speeder and a swoop, you know.

“Impressive,” he agreed as she used her fingerprint to unlock the rider interface, got on, fired it up, put him on the back, and took off. 

After riding for about 20 minutes, she pulled up in front of the place she called home. Not much was visible except sand and old wrecked warships. 

She tucked away her speeder in the vehicle bay of the walker, then took Kylo around to the other side.

There Rey disabled the motion sensors which protected the entrance and crawled through the auxiliary hatch which had originally been on the bottom of the troop carrier. Kylo did the same.

“Where’d you get the motion sensors?” he asked as he stood up. 

“The sensor array in the head,” she responded, smiling. 

The space in the lower troop deck wasn’t exactly cramped, but since the room was turned sideways, everything seemed jumbled and out of place. Rey was used to it, of course, and was a little apologetic to her guest. 

“Sorry it seems like such an obstacle course,” she said as she turned on a portable torch. The only light in the walker was coming from a couple of openings in the transport’s exterior. With the sun nearly down, it was increasingly dim. 

Kylo had to duck in some places where structures that had originally been on the walls were now hanging from overhead. 

“You had told me your walker was lying on its side, but I don’t think I ever envisioned it this way,” he admitted. 

“Well… I’m used to it now. I don’t even think of it as sideways anymore. I’ve lived here long enough that it feels right this way,” Rey said with a laugh. 

Kylo made himself comfortable by taking off his backpack and sitting where he could.  
  
Rey had put her staff away and was kicking off her boots to get comfortable. Then she brought out her package of portions from the little bag she carried on her back. 

“Would you like to eat?” she offered generously, gesturing at her little stove. “I have enough food today to share.”

Kylo smiled as he opened his knapsack and started bringing out a small feast: containers of hummus, various dipping vegetables, and breads, skins of water and ale, a package containing some kind of dried meat, sweet cakes wrapped in big green leaves, and a good assortment of fruits and berries. 

“Well, shit,” Rey exclaimed, almost at a loss for words. “This is amazing.”

She put her own meager package of processed food away in favor of Kylo’s offerings. 

“You sure know the way to a girl’s heart.”

Kylo wasn't hungry, but he enjoyed watching her dig in and try things she had never tasted before. He knew much better than she what a wide world it was and how many varieties of food were available on it. It hadn't taken much of his energy to conjure some of it up to please her. He drank of little of the ale he had brought to quench his thirst, but not enough to make him tipsy.

Rey sampled each dish at least once before going back to the ones she liked best. 

“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked between bites.

Kylo shook his head, dark hair falling into his eyes as he did so. “I already ate. I’m glad you like what I brought, though.”

The variety and amount of food, on top of Kylo being there, made Rey exhilarated.

“This is quite a place you have,” Kylo complimented her sincerely. 

“I know it’s not much, but it’s mine,” she said between bites. 

“It’s actually rather charming. Just like you,” he said, smiling. “Is that the old Y-wing computer display you rigged up?”

Rey looked at it, feeling some pride swell in her chest. “Yeah. I made it into a flight simulator and taught myself to fly.”

“That’s really something.”

“That’s my hammock over there.” It was next to the shelves where she kept the little doll she had made out of bits of an old Rebel uniform she’d found, and a little plant she was growing. She didn’t point out the wall where she’d put a mark for each day she lived there. 

After Rey had eaten to her heart’s content, Kylo started packing up the remains back into his rucksack. 

“Thank you for bringing me that. It was really good.”

“You’re welcome. I have some money in here too. It’s for you, whether you come with me or not.”

There it was. The topic she had wanted to avoid. 

“I want you to leave Jakku and come with me.”

“Where?”

“Almost anywhere. We could go any place you wanted.”

He was looking at her like she had hung the moon, but she felt a sense of panic welling within her.

“What about King Snoke? Isn’t he going to want you to stay with him?”

Kylo sighed. “I haven’t got everything worked out completely, but we can do it together.” 

“We’re together now,” Rey pointed out.

“Please come with me, Rey.” He sounded like he was begging.

“I can’t leave Jakku,” she explained again, as if it were the first time “My parents are coming back for me.”

He looked pained, sitting there, staring at her. 

“You’ve been waiting a long time for them to come back.”

“Yes, but they said they would.” It started to feel like she was doing this by rote, making these excuses and reassurances. 

Kylo kept trying. “Are you sure? Maybe it would be better to go try to find them. Maybe they’re stuck someplace and can’t make it back. We could look for them together.” 

“What do you mean?” Rey’s anxiety was rising through her body like one of Jakku’s legendary sandstorms. 

“Or we could leave some kind of record behind for them if we left. We could pay someone to report to us if anyone like your parents returned. We can set up a camera and see for ourselves if anyone interesting shows up.”

Rey felt horrified. The idea of leaving was just overwhelming. She couldn’t bear it.

“I just can’t do that.”

Kylo sighed, frustrated. “Leave here and marry me. Let me be your family. We can start a family of our own. Come with me.”

She felt tears fill her eyes and her throat close up. 

“I...I want to, but... I can’t. Can't you stay here with me instead? I need to wait for my parents. Don’t you understand?”

She could see Kylo getting frustrated, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“I understand, Rey. But they haven't come in fifteen years. What makes you think they might still show up?”

“They said they would come back for me,” she whined quietly, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand.

Kylo’s demeanor changed. “Did they? Or did someone else tell you that? Maybe someone who wasn't trustworthy? Maybe someone who was just trying to be nice?”

“That's not true,” she said, her voice quavering. “I was told my parents were coming back. I just needed to wait for them.”

He was becoming more agitated. “Maybe that was true at the time. Maybe it's not anymore. Maybe you need to let it go.”

“Stop it!” she objected, getting up to try to quell the restless energy that had been awakened in her. “I have to be here. If they come back and I'm not here, they'll think I didn't love them and I left.”

He was shaking and tense, but his voice stayed calm.

“Rey, your parents wouldn't think that. If anything, they would be impressed you had waited and believed in them for so long. They wouldn't want you to stay here any longer. They would want something better for you. Your life here is miserable. You've told me so yourself. Your parents would want you to be happy.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over and ran down her cheeks as she paced in the tiny amount of floor space.

“No! Stay with me instead!” she offered desperately. “I'd be happy if you were here.” 

“Rey, you hate it here. I can't live here. Please come with me. Marry me. I promise your parents aren't coming back.”

“Stop!” Rey was crying fully now, her voice shaking. “Stop saying that. You don't know!”

“Why don't you trust me? Haven't I done everything right? Haven't I taken care of you? You need to trust me when I tell you that you're never going to see them again.”

“You don't know!” she insisted again, showing her teeth in a grimace. “You can't know that!”

She turned and began to flail at him with her fists. “Stop lying to me! You don't know!”

Kylo threw up his arms as a shield but was unable to stand up with her pummeling him. 

“I do know!” he blurted out. “I know because I am the one who left you here! I'm the one who told you that. Your parents are dead! They died trying to protect you!”

Rey froze. 

“What?” she shouted. “That doesn’t make any sense. Protect me from who? From what?”

“From me!” Kylo yelled back at her. “From me and my king! You were royalty, my king’s political rival. I was sent to assassinate you, but I wasn't able to do it.”

Rey wasn't able to keep up. “What? You killed my parents?” 

“Yes!” Kylo exclaimed. “No! I mean…” He took a deep breath and tried to slow down. “I didn't kill them. And I couldn't kill you either. I just...left you here with that awful man, Plutt, though, and that's bad enough.” 

“You did...what?” Rey asked angrily as she began to hit him again. “You left me here with him to starve?”

“That wasn't what I meant to do! I was trying to save your life!”

Rey’s entire world was under siege, and she broke under its weight. 

“How could you?” she shrieked. She had to stop the torrent of information that was destroying her. Suddenly the person she thought she might be able to love turned out to be the person who had ruined her life. 

She felt as if her hand was acting of its own accord when it removed a knife from her pocket and slashed at him blindly. “You monster! I hate you!”

A bright red streak opened down his face as he wrestled her far enough away from him so he could stand. Then he was gone.


	7. Goodbyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo jeopardized his relationship with Rey when he asked her to leave Jakku with him. She refused and hurt him, so he left without any explanation. Now his heart hurts more than the injury on his face does, and it brings up bad memories from his childhood.
> 
> Rey blames herself for her fight with Kylo.

Kylo’s argument with Rey had been his worst nightmare. Instead of hearing her insecurities and need for validation, he had fallen back into all the old stories he had told about himself. 

He should have listened to Rey’s reaction and sympathized with her instead of making it all about himself. 

Kylo had been trying to stand up when Rey slashed at him. Her blow had barely missed taking his eye and had left him with a deep bloody gash on his face. In his rage, hurt and confusion, he used his magick instinctively to fly out of the walker with blood running down his face. He was devastated.

Rey had seen him for what he really was, and had rejected him. 

She had judged it better to live with no love at all than to endure his grotesque affections. He had hoped that this time would be different and that he would finally be enough for someone. He had given of himself as much as he could, but it hadn't been enough. Rey preferred staying on this barren rock than loving him, because of the ugliness of his heart. He had been judged a monster once again, and it was completely justified. 

Landing back in his own chambers in Faerie, Kylo was in a state of shock. He all but fell upon his bed, his nerves shattered and his head pounding. His pulse throbbed in his face where Rey had slashed it open. It hurt like hell, but it was a dull ache compared to the pain of his broken heart. 

Rey’s physical violence against him brought back so many awful memories. It wasn’t the first time someone had assaulted him.

Kylo had not revealed the entire truth of his childhood to Rey, even couched in language that didn’t refer to Faerie. Nor was his story quite as simple as he had described it to her, even if he himself thought of it that way.

Kylo’s parents lived in the Light Court, or the Summer Court, it was called. When Kylo, or Ben as he had been named originally, was born, they had expected him to have light hair, eyes and skin, as they themselves had. Everyone was shocked at Ben’s appearance. 

Leia, his mother, had been nervous about the birth. She saw immediately that her son was not was she had anticipated. When Jamii, the midwife, held the baby upside down to spank it and make it gasp for her, Leia could see his dark hair. 

The midwife had a distasteful look on her face when she handed the infant to his mother. 

“And here’s your baby. Ten fingers and ten toes,” the doula said. She had at least been able to keep the disgust out of her voice. 

That was good because Leia didn’t care what Jamii thought. She already knew she loved her baby no matter what. “Thank you, Jamii. Please show my husband in.”

Ben’s dark brown, almond-shaped eyes had opened after a few minutes, and Leia sighed, anticipating how hard his life was bound to be in the Light Court. She knew everyone would see his birth as a public announcement that she or Han had not been of pure Light blood, as had been previously thought. Somewhere in their lineage had been Dark Fae, who belonged in the Winter Court with the others of a dark nature. 

When Han came in and saw the baby, he was similarly surprised, but he took it well. He hid his consternation as he cooed at Ben, and for that Leia was immensely grateful. It could have been much worse. 

“Little Ben,” he said. “You may not look much like your daddy, but you and I are going to be great friends.”

Despite Ben’s potential to embarrass his parents before the rest of the court, they loved him as he was and treated him like all the other Summer Children. He was _not_ like the other children, though. He was shy around them, not taking part in the games and easy camaraderie of children whose parents all knew each other. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

When he was old enough to start having tutors and playing with his peers more often, his appearance made him stand out like a sore thumb. If that weren’t bad enough, his behavior was off-putting to both the children and the teachers. 

One time Tejema, the nature studies instructor, had sent the children out into pick flowers. 

“Go out and bring me some plants. We can learn from examining them,” she had told them. 

Hamee brought wildflowers and gave them to the teacher with a little curtsy. Some of the others had gathered dandelions, blue columbine, cornflower and foxgloves. 

The teacher rather liked Ben and tried to be kind to him.

“And what do you have, young sir?” she asked, bending over. 

The little boy pulled his hands from behind his back to reveal one fistful of deadly nightshade and the other full of poisonous toadstools. Unlike the other students, Ben was somber, with big dark eyes. Tejema knew he had a difficult road ahead. 

Ben found childish games unamusing, and the others refused to ask him to play. Most offspring of the Light Court contented themselves with puppies and kittens, and maybe a unicorn or two. Ben had been more interested in spiders and snakes, bats and wolves. His favorite pet was a baby dragon he had tamed. 

Even worse, as his childhood magicks manifested, they appeared to be of a dark nature. He lit twigs on fire by accident and turned bigger animals into frogs just for fun. He was quick to anger, as most Fae were, but he was also petty and spiteful in his revenge against those he believed had wronged him.

When he started interacting with the other kinds of faeries in the Light Court, his temperament became even worse. 

Leia found him trying to comb pixie knots out of his hair one afternoon. His face was scrunched up in frustration and he was mumbling under his breath. 

“What’s wrong, Ben?”

He sighed and stopped trying to disentangle his dark locks. 

“My hair’s all in knots from the pixies, and I can’t get them out. I’ve been trying forever.”

Pixie magic was too strong for Leia to be able to just enchant the knots away, and she wanted Ben to learn that not everything in life was fixed with magic. She got out the scissors and started cutting. 

“What did you do the pixies?” she asked quietly. 

“Nothing,” Ben pouted. “I walked through one of their fields.”

Leia pursed her lips. “That seems unfair. Life is that way, though. You need to be more careful where you’re walking.”

When she was done, Ben’s hair was much shorter than he liked it. 

“In three days time, I’ll make your hair grow faster. Until then, the short hair will show the pixies that you’re sorry,” his mother told him.

The little boy looked down guiltily. “No, it won’t.”

Leia tried to not be exasperated. “Why not?”

“They won’t see it,” he explained with his lower lip stuck out. “I sent them to the center of the earth.”

Leia was obviously alarmed. “How quickly did you bring them back?”

“I didn’t.” 

Her heart sank. “How long has it been?”

“Since this morning.” The expression on her face showed her son her displeasure. 

“And you didn’t get them back? There’s no air down there! They’ll be dead by now!”

Ben shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I didn’t know how to do it.”

Another time, he took his revenge on a lesser courtier who had snubbed the little boy repeatedly. Ben had transformed him into a toad, which he kept in a jar in his bedroom. He once transported a strict tutor into the center of a tree, which only came to light when his parents caught him playing hooky from his lessons. They had been able to extricate the teacher only with great difficulty and he had held a grudge.

As he neared maturity and his adult powers began to manifest, Ben appeared more ominous still. Other teens developed the usual adult Hands of Power: a Hand of Steel, a Hand of Flight, or a Hand of Invisibility. Ben developed a Hand of Blood. It gave him the power to turn water into blood, even a small ocean of it, killing all the sea life therein and depriving those living around it of its clean, fresh water. It was a potent power to have but difficult to control. 

Another time he’d been angered by a mortal in a nearby village. He had turned himself into a dragon and burned the entire place down to a pile of ashes, buildings and people both. In fact, the worst thing about him had been his lack of mastery over the fires he accidentally started with his second Hand of Power, which was Fire. At a certain age, he had created blazes all over the Summer Court except for the places they were wanted. 

In Ben’s usual way, each of his missteps outdid the last. Others in the court became frightened of him, and even the Light King himself began to be concerned about Ben’s untrained power. So no one except Ben was surprised when his mother kissed him goodbye and his father took him to live at the Dark Court, which was used to creatures like him.

Ben fit in better at the Winter Court, but he felt betrayed by his parents. It seemed as if they had just given up on him. They had spent so little time with him when he had been a child, leaving the court on the King’s business, presiding over feasts given in their honor, helping a mortal favorite spin straw into gold or some other nonsense. Why had they been so willing to help other people, but not their own son? 

But for all his resentment, Kylo never quite forgot the beauty and elegance of those in the Light Court. Well mannered and educated, they were all tall, thin, and graceful with blond hair, pale skin, and bright eyes, unlike the raven-haired, sloe-eyed, hulking Kylo, who was considered too muscular and brutish to be thought handsome among them. He had often been the target of their secret cruelties, wicked tongues, and casual malevolence. He hadn’t realized that they were like that to each other as well, although not as often as they had been to him. 

As a young child, Kylo had been shielded by his parents from the Fae's casual violence and callous killing of humans. He hadn’t understood that the Court's ease and lightness was the result of frivolousness and self-indulgence. He had idolized the luminous courtiers and nobles he saw every day, not seeing the ugliness of their behavior, and had wanted to be like them.

No one in the Summer court had remembered to teach Ben that the growth and pleasant weather of spring and summer would not be possible without the harvest in the fall and winter. He did not know that the land must lie fallow after the crops had been taken in so that it could rest and become ready to be seeded again in the spring. The Light needed some Dark to flourish. But Ben was only vaguely aware that it was the decay of dead things that restored the fields so they would be fertile again later. The Light Court cared nothing about those things, so Ben had no sense of his own worth or the worth of his kind

He had loved and hated the Summer Court in equal measure, despising the way they treated him, yet yearning to be one of them all the same. Even as an adult he was unaware that many in the Light Court had done things just as wicked as he had, and that his own deeds were no more evil than theirs. They just hid their own misdeeds better and had little conscience to bother them. Somewhere in his secret heart, Kylo believed Rey was unable to love him because he was undeserving of her love. His dark hair, his dark eyes, and his dark heart made him a monster.

After Rey had slashed Kylo’s face and he had fled, she’d been frightened and furious with both herself and him. 

She regretted slashing him immediately. It had been stupid and cowardly, but she had been enraged by his secrecy and finding out that he had played a role in her abandonment. Even now she wasn’t sure what part he had played in it. The sight of the bright red blood on his handsome face, however, had shocked her out of her fit of rage. 

How could she have struck the man she was coming to love? Who had been nothing but gentle and kind to her? She had driven away the only person who might have loved her. Not that he would now after had wounded him, perhaps mortally. 

That all went through her head in the space of a second. She scrambled out of the walker after him as fast as she could, but he was gone. There was no way he could have traveled quickly enough to disappear so completely. When she climbed up onto the side of the walker, she could see for miles. He was nowhere to be found. She could hardly believe it. It was as if he had disappeared by magic. She circled the area and called his name until she felt hoarse and decided it wasn't going to do any good. She had to accept that he had deserted her. 

Rey burst into tears and dropped to the ground. She cried until her face was a mess of spit and snot, then drug herself back into her home. 

Finally, she cried herself to sleep with a full belly and an aching heart. She hoped against hope to return to the island and talk to him while she slept, but she wasn't able to on her own. 

In the morning, when Kylo had not returned, she knew she had lost him. He'd trusted her with the secrets of his heart, and she had assaulted him. 

Her grief warred with her anger and sense of betrayal. She asked herself how she could have trusted him so completely when he turned out to have been the man who had caused the death of her parents and ruined her life. She should have guessed he would turn out to have an ulterior motive. But she still wanted to know more. 

She needed to find out why he had been sent to kill her when she was a child, and why he hadn’t. She also wanted to learn more about her parents, and he was the only one who could tell her. 

Then she slid into regret. She had to talk to Kylo, to apologize for hurting him, for driving him away. To tell him that she loved him too. His immediate and total absence made her realize how much she missed him, and how she longed to see him again, whether he would answer any of her questions or not. 

Kylo had been right; the possible love of her dead or non-existent parents was nothing compared to the very real love he had already given to her. She had pined for a family all these years, then the first chance she’d been given to have someone of her own, she threw it away. She didn’t really know what love was, but she did know that, without Kylo, she had a deep, cutting pain in her chest that made her want to die. 

Analyzing it, Rey thought that Kylo should have taken it slower with her, not told her everything all at once. It had been too much for her to take in. If she hadn’t believed her family loved her and was coming back for her, she didn’t know if she could have survived for so long. It not only had given her hope for the future, but it had also validated her very existence. She had been reluctant to give that belief up, even after she began to suspect Kylo was right. What did it say about her that she had stayed someplace she hated because if she left, it would have meant all the time she spent there had been in vain? 

Now she realized none of that mattered. She couldn’t change the past. She had to live in the present, and she couldn’t make it what she wanted just by believing in it. 

When Rey felt calmer, she tried to make sense of what he had said. He had been sent to kill her when she was just a baby, which didn’t make much sense. Her parents had taken her away to protect her, which meant they did love her; they hadn’t left her to be murdered. But somehow they had gotten killed, and when Kylo tried to kill her, he hadn’t been able to. That was completely illogical too. She didn’t know how old he was, but he couldn’t be that much older than she was. How could he have already been an adult when she had been a baby? 

Lastly, apparently, Kylo had been the one to leave her with Plutt. Him she hated with the fire of a thousand suns. Why had Kylo left her with someone so terrible? He’d been unhappy when she told him about how little food she received and his bad treatment of her in general. Maybe he regretted leaving her there now, since he had gotten to know her. Maybe now he felt guilty.

What had happened had been years ago. Something had changed, and now Kylo wanted to marry her, to be together always. He’d offered good solutions too, of leaving someone to watch for her parents, or putting a camera in place, or going to look for them herself. Of course, none of that mattered since Kylo knew they were dead, but she hadn’t known at that point. Why hadn’t she taken one of his suggestions? She hadn’t even listened at the time, so upset over the idea of leaving without her parents.

Finally, Rey harnessed herself mentally and tried to focus. She pulled Kylo's bag over to examine what was still in it. She ate some of the food that was left, then wondered what she should do with gold he had brought with him. It would have bought a lot of portions. Or a nice place to live. Or passage to somewhere else. What Rey wanted most now, though, was to find Kylo and be with him. What she needed was a plan. 

In the end, she bought a vehicle in order to go find him. Regardless of what he had done in the past, she wanted to be with him now. And he had wanted to be with her. He probably thought she didn’t want him after the violent way she had reacted. If he wouldn’t return to her, she would have to try to find him. And since she had hurt him, the onus was on her to make it up to him. 

Rey was reluctant to leave behind her doll, her plant, and the other little things she had accumulated in her home, like the Rebel helmet she used to wear for fun. She finally transferred the plant to Kylo's rucksack along with the doll and attached the helmet to her bike when she headed out toward Niima Outpost. The doll didn't take up much space, and she planned to plant the little spine barrel cactus somewhere. She needed to get equipment and supplies. 

Rey had to decide what to do with the antique speeder bike she had rebuilt. She didn’t need it anymore, but it still had a place in her heart. 

As she was negotiating on other items she needed, she watched Mokelly, an older woman who had been kind to her, laboriously dragging items to the Concession Stand. She had no mode of transportation, which severely limited the area where she could prospect or scavenge. The woman was in good physical condition, though, and Rey thought she’d be able to handle the bike. 

Rey approached her after they had both finished their various transactions and were sitting beneath a tarp in the shade, resting. 

“Hey, Mo,” she said lightly. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” the older woman answered. “About average.”

“Did you know that I’m leaving?”

Her friend’s face showed surprise. “Really? After all these years? Did your parents finally come for you?”

Rey held on to her determination to put the past behind her. She shouldn’t falter now, and neither should she fear Mo’s judgment. “No. They’re not coming. I’m going on an adventure.”

“Good for you!” the woman smiled and congratulated her. “I knew you’d make it out of this sandpit!”

Rey was relieved, having anticipated more thorough questioning about her parents. Maybe no one else really cared. 

“Thanks! I need to get rid of my bike though. I bought a speeder instead.”

“That’s great. Good luck selling it.” She took a drink from a metal water bottle. 

Rey looked down, trying to be casual. “I thought maybe you would take it. You’ve been so nice to me, helping me clean my findings. I thought maybe you could use it.”

“Oh, I don’t have anything to trade for it,” Mo dismissed her. 

“I actually was just going to give it to you. I have some money now. I want my bike to have a good home, and it would help you. Make it easier to bring stuff to the Concession Stand.”

Mo was stunned, but she knew a good deal when she saw it and quickly took Rey up on it. They got up and Rey went over all the features with her and changed the lock to Mo’s fingerprint. As they were about to part, Rey decided to start her research right there. 

“Mo, I’m looking for a foreigner. I don’t know what country he’s from, but I need to find out.”

“Well, sure,” the older woman agreed as she continued examining the bike. 

“I know it sounds weird, but I met a man who appeared to me in my dreams. He was able to give me things that I still had once I woke up. He was also able to disappear into thin air. It was very strange.”

Startled, Mo looked up from her new vehicle. “That doesn’t sound like a foreigner. It sounds like one of the Fae.”

Rey couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard the word before or not. “The Fae?”

“Like a faery, if you will,” she tried to clarify. 

“I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“Well, normally I wouldn’t talk about them. They don’t like it, you know. But since you’ve been so generous, I don’t mind telling you. They look like regular folk mostly, but they’re magical. They live for hundreds of years, and they have their own land. Usually, they play tricks on people, so you want to be careful. They can be dangerous.”

This was far more information than Rey had before, and it was a lot to take in. “Thank you very much. Do you have any other advice?”

She squinted her eyes and went back to looking at the bike. “Be very careful in your dealings with them. Don’t tell them your name. Don’t eat or drink anything they give you. That’s about it. Good luck, honey.” 

They shook hands firmly when Rey turned to leave and walk away. The more she learned about the Fae, the more frightening they seemed. Kylo had never harmed her though. And he had said he loved her. She hoped that meant something. 

Before she left Niima for good, she located and talked to several of the people she considered the most knowledgeable about how to track down Kylo. She felt instinctively that his ability to create her dream island and his appearance when she encountered him in real life were key to identifying and finding him. 

She started by describing Kylo's magical abilities first since they were least likely to be found in the regular population: creating the dream island and knowing where she was in the real world and meeting her there. Turning up unexpectedly and then vanishing into nothing. If they seemed unfamiliar with such things, she thanked them and went on her way. If they seemed informed about such topics, she pressed further. 

Onnej was a woman prospector who had been in Jakku since before Rey remembered. She was cantankerous, but she had traveled widely in her youth and was thought to be very intelligent. She accepted Rey’s invitation to have some caff in one of the pubs after Rey made it clear she was buying.

When Rey had started describing Kylo, Oneej had brought up the word Fae with no prompting. She went on to ask about Kylo’s appearance. 

“What did this man look like? Was he short or tall? Smart or stupid? Did he seem any different in your dreams than he did when you met him in real life? It might be important.”

Rey took a sip of the caff, finding it less bitter than usual. 

“When I saw him in my dreams, he was tall, handsome and well built, but he seemed like an ordinary person. Here he looked mostly the same, but… well, his eyes looked different. I had thought they were brown, but here they looked almost translucent, like a golden color. I’ve never seen eyes like that before.”

Oneej asked for another cup of caff, and the server brought her one. 

“That seems like a clue. What else was different?”

“His eyes were almond-shaped and turned up at the edges. Very attractive.”

Oneej grunted noncommittally. 

Rey had to think hard back to the brief time they had spent together. 

“He seemed bigger. Actually, I wasn’t the only one who seemed to think he was attractive either. A lot of people watched him when he was at the outpost, you know what I mean. They all tried to catch his eye or speak to him.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she muttered. “Have you heard of Faeries?”

Rey felt a surge of excitement. This was the second time that work had come up. She was onto something. “Only once. Can you tell me more?”

Oneej licked her lips after taking a new cup of caff from the waitstaff. “It’s another name for the Fae. He didn’t have no wings, did he? Or antennas? Or pointed ears?”

Rey frowned. He definitely didn’t have wings or antennae, but when she saw him in her home, his ear did seem perhaps a bit pointy. 

“No on the first two. I’m not sure on the ears,” she confided. 

The older woman looked down into her cup. “I think that’s all I know then.”

Rey finished her own drink and stuck out her hand to shake. “Thank you for your help.”

“Happy to give it,” Oneej said, putting one hand in Rey’s to shake and one on top of it. “Good luck finding your friend. Be careful.”

Rey didn’t recall saying he was a friend, but perhaps the prospector was more perceptive than most. 

All the people who knew about the Fae had mentioned they were able to use magic. No one else near Niima Outpost had anything to say on the subject. One person had specifically said that it was only logical that they didn’t get many Faeries in Jakku, since the environment itself was markedly harsh and lacking in magic. 

After that, the day began to cool down and Rey headed out, with one last order of business. Before she left, Rey planted a stink bomb behind Plutt’s stand to end his day with a bang. Good riddance. 

She found herself hoping never to return to Jakku. Unless she was with Kylo. She would go anywhere with him. 

She didn’t make it very far that night, but the important thing was that she had started. Rey slept in her speeder with her bo staff until past sun up. She ate a little of the leftover food Kylo had brought her, then continued driving on the main thoroughfare until she reached a settlement, where she bought more to eat, found places to clean herself up, and chatted with some of the locals. 

It was easier in the desert to sleep during the day, especially if she could find some shade, and then travel at night. She continued in that vein for a while, asking people at each stop if they knew anything about the Fae. When she reached more hospitable lands, she found people who had a vast knowledge of the Fae and confirmed that they used magic in the same way Kylo had. They created things in ways that defied logic and manipulated the rules of time and space as regular people knew them to be. Rey not only sought out these people’s opinions about the Fae but asked them where their land might be and how to find them. 

For awhile, Rey found herself thinking of the Fae as just like one of the other exotic and foreign peoples she had encountered at Niima Outpost. Her attitude toward them was becoming more relaxed, but her sources cautioned her strongly that Faeries were not like humans and that it was usually dangerous for someone human to meet a Fae. These beings had incredible power in the form of their magic and she would be sorry if she underestimated them.


	8. The Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's unpleasant childhood memories were stirred up by Rey's rejection of his proposal. 
> 
> Rey blamed herself for their separation and left Jakku to look for Kylo. She hears about the Fae for the first time during her travels.

As the days became weeks, Rey entered new lands, verdant green ones, filled with wildlife and rich in food and freshwater. She enjoyed the landscape, continuing her pattern of stopping only for supplies and to hear folk tales about the Fae. Stories about them were told more frequently in the fertile lands she had entered, and she learned quite a bit of helpful information. 

When she went to sleep in the back seat of her speeder, at whatever time seemed to be the most practical, carefully hidden and locked for the night, she wished she would see Kylo in her dreams again. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for what she had done, to tell him that she loved him after all and didn't want to live without him. She had come to understand what he had done and that she had forgiven him. While she sometimes did have dreams about him, she never encountered him in her dreams again as she had on the island. 

At one stop, Rey encountered a fortune-teller named Emmis Ryting, who said she knew of Faeries and their ways and would tell Rey for the right price. Rey had her doubts, but Rey paid her, and the woman said things similar to many other people and gave her new information as well. 

“If you’re looking for the Land of Faerie, you may not be going about it the right way,” the blond girl said, shaking her head. Blond hair had been uncommon in Jakku, and Rey found herself fascinated with the way light reflected from the smooth strands. 

“I can’t give you physical directions to Faerie, like I could to one of the cities along this road or any other. If you want to find Faeries and talk to them, you need to search in different ways. Look for Faerie rings: circles of trees or mushrooms that were not planted, but just grew that way. Or circles of stones. Perhaps a huge mound with a circular trail up to the top. It’s best to look at night when the Fae are most active in our world. That is how you will find your way into Faerie.”

Rey thanked the woman and continued traveling. From then on, she kept an eye out for naturally occurring rings of any kind, but usually, they turned out to be incomplete or to have been created by someone. 

The most helpful part of the fortune teller’s advice had been to search in different ways. She started to visualize Faerie less as a particular location and more of a dimension that co-existed in some strange way with her own. She listened to other people who described encounters with the Fae that relied more upon the magical nature of Faeries themselves than upon finding a specific geographical place. 

In the cooler climes Rey had entered, it was no longer necessary for her to avoid traveling in the heat of the day, but she continued to move mostly at night, as she had been advised.

The more serious her search became, the more people tried to warn Rey against any contact with the Fae. A woman with a strange accent named Gemmal cautioned her and told her to always carry salt with her, to form a protective circle around herself if she ever saw a Faerie. A rich man named Ahsley suggesting carrying small items of iron with her, like penny nails, since Faeries hated cold iron. 

Some folk were still helpful. Wraychi, a young girl in one of the villages where Rey stopped, told her to look for round rocks with a hold in the center. If you looked through the hole in the moonlight, you might see Faeries in the area that would otherwise be invisible. 

So Rey paused regularly in green, out-of-the-way places to look for such stones, as well as for Faery rings. She had also heard that the Fae loved gifts, so she left little offerings of sugar or spices for them whenever she found circles. She thought they would enjoy a flower or a small piece of shiny metal. She took to using small tinkling bells to try to call the Fae to her.

No matter what fearsome stories Rey heard about the Fae, however, she continued to search for them wholeheartedly. She discarded any items made from cold iron, and she refused to carry salt. She went undefended - the same way Kylo had approached her - seeking any of his people, with no real consideration of safety for herself. Out on the edges of her consciousness, she believed that life would no longer be worth living without him. She would find him or die.

When Rey came upon her first river, she had to stop just to admire it. The island had felt very real, but free, clean, running water was a new experience for her. She sat by it for over half an hour, just watching it and the creatures in it. 

Kylo was ever-present in her mind, though. As she got up from the riverbank to return to her speeder, she spied a perfectly round stone with a hole going right through it. She picked it up and looked through the center, but was disappointed not to see anything. Nevertheless, she put it in her pocket. She would try again. Undoubtedly some of the stories about the Fae were untrue, but it wouldn’t cost Rey anything but a bit of time to try out the stone.

That very night, the full moon shone brightly as Rey prepared to stop for sleep. Instead of bedding down right away, however, she got out of her vehicle and looked around the area, noticing a ring of mushrooms nearby. She approached the faery ring and peered through the hole in her new faery stone.

A tiny winged faery fluttered about in the grass. Rey hardly believed her eyes. She moved the stone aside to look at the mushrooms again and saw nothing unusual. Then she put the stone back up to her eye to see the little creature again. She tried to remember all the Fae etiquette she had ever heard to avoid insulting it as she decided how to greet it.

Slowly and carefully Rey approached the faery ring, knelt respectfully, set out an offering of a tiny bit of honey and waited. Soon the sprite flew out of the mushroom ring to take Rey's offering. As it turned to fly away, Rey called to it, begging it to help her find her betrothed, Kylo Ren. 

The little sprite was a member of the Light Court, but she had heard of the Dark King's assassin, of course.

She was frightened to face the promised wife of such a fearsome being, but Rey herself didn’t look scary and the honey had been very tasty. 

The tiny faery returned to Rey and offered to tell her what she knew. Rey was aware that the idea of a one-to-one exchange - like commerce - was considered insulting to the Fae. Instead, she sat down, took out her rations, and invited the sprite to a meal. She had specially set aside small portions of food that the Fae were said to like. 

The faery had descended carefully to sit down on a toadstool across from Rey, as if they were boon companions sharing a meal, and took the smallest bit of honeycomb imaginable. After the perfectly formed little woman tasted it, she settled back to tell Rey what she knew of Kylo Ren.

Ben Solo, she said, as he had been named at birth, had been born in the Light Court, years ago when the power between the two courts had been more in balance. As an adolescent, his bad behavior had gotten him banished to the Dark Court to live with his uncle. The uncle, however, had not been on good terms with the King. When King Snoke realized the true extent of Ben's powers, he told the boy lies of the most vicious nature and persuaded him to kill his uncle. 

Even the Dark Fae despise a kin-slayer, so the boy became estranged from the rest of the Dark Court, which played into Snoke’s hands perfectly. When word reached Ben’s parents of what he had done, they disowned him. Ben had never made friends easily, and now Snoke used his infamy to isolate him further so that the only person he could turn to would be Snoke. To keep Ben from seeing through this ruse, he made the boy his heir and promised him power and might to seal the deal, declaring that Ben Solo was dead and christening him Kylo Ren. 

Rey told the sprite stories of her own travels, as friends do, then offered her some dried berries and a drop from her wineskin. After they finished eating and drinking, the sprite told her which direction she should go and what to look for in order to reach the dark lands of Faerie, should she want to visit her fiance.

Knowing that saying thank you to a Fae was considered insulting, Rey had simply bid her goodnight politely and was walking away when the little woman spoke once more. 

“If you do enter Faerie to find your betrothed, be careful not to eat or drink anything, regardless of how hungry or thirsty you are, for once you do, you will be unable to leave.” 

Rey told her goodbye once again before returning to her speeder to sleep for the night. First thing in the morning, she would head out the way the sprite had told her to.

Kylo had returned to the Dark Court. He had never formally left, merely spent his nights with Rey when he would otherwise be sleeping. He hadn't told anyone about Rey and had continued to serve Snoke in the daylight hours as he had for years. 

Kylo had been deeply hurt by the wound on his face and the crack in his heart, both inflicted by the woman he thought loved him. He needed time to heal and regroup, to think about what had happened. He had suffered much worse injuries on the battlefield, but he had been vulnerable with her, and she had attacked him. Physical pain aside, that felt worse than anything Snoke had ever done to him. He hadn't felt this sort of heartache since his father had given him a red saber and left him at the Dark Court. He still wasn’t good enough.

Even so, he longed for Rey: for the way she snuggled up close to him, enjoying the warmth of his body; her happy expression when she saw him for the first time each night; the sympathy she had shown him when listening to stories from his unhappy childhood or his even less meaningful adulthood. She had understood him the way no one else had. 

Kylo missed things about Rey that had nothing to do with him: her cock-eyed optimism, her belief in the goodness of people, her ingenuity and creativity, her simple enjoyment of things like watching the ocean, observing nature, and playing in the rain. 

Kylo came to the conclusion that he asked too much of her at once. He should have told her the truth about his role in her parents’ death and the creation of her misery as a child before asking her to leave Jakku. He had been too wrapped up in trying to circumvent the truth. It would have been best for him to reveal his sin to her, let her come to terms with it, then ask her to marry him afterward. In many ways, this was his fault as well. 

He was resting in his chambers, trying to keep his mind from her, when he heard someone knock at the door. It was the king's messenger, a young Fae from the Winter Court, who looked a bit nervous about taking a message to the notorious Kylo Ren. Kylo opened the missive to find that Snoke had summoned him to the Throne Room. Immediately. That didn't bode well. He knew he had broken protocol, which dictated that he inform the king of any serious injuries he received as soon as possible. He had no way to hide the inflamed red furrow on his face. 

Kylo followed the messenger to the royal chamber, trying to keep his breathing even and his face from revealing his apprehension. He knew Snoke would ask about the injury to his cheek. 

Face ashen, he entered the cavernous Throne Room, alarmed at the absence of other courtiers. No one was there except for Snoke and his ever-present Praetorian Guard which predicted a punishment. If it had been a regular matter, more members of the court would have been been in attendance. Snoke preferred to administer his punishments in private, so as to create the illusion of perfect control over his heir. Kylo pushed down his anxiety and knelt before his master, whose expression was like that of a cat playing with an insect. Kylo guessed that someone had already told Snoke about his wound.

“My young student, I see a bandage on your face, but I don't remember charging you with any duty that would have caused such an injury.”

Kylo remained silent, looking down, trying to hide his broken heart from his lord. 

“Were you injured sparring with your knights?”

Kylo knew this game. Snoke would ask a series of apparently harmless questions, then accuse him of the humiliating truth. There was no way to shorten its duration or change the outcome. It was done, in part, to break his spirit.

“Perhaps the castle was invaded without my being informed?” Snoke went on. 

Kylo was resigned. “No, Master.”

“Maybe you fell upon your sword accidentally?”

“No, Master.”

“They how, exactly, did you receive it?” The sudden steel in Snoke's voice was chilling.

Kylo knew that if he had still been in Snoke's good graces, he would have been invited to stand by now. Since he was still on one knee, he tried to shift his weight without revealing the movement which Snoke would take as a sign of weakness.

“I was slashed with a knife.”

Snoke’s ice-blue eyes were like those of a hawk now. “And who, I wonder, would have dared to wound my heir so?”

“A girl,” Kylo answered, unable to lie and too tired and heartsick to argue. 

“What is this girl's name?”

“Her name is Rey, Master.”

Snoke looked momentarily confused as if his old game were taking a turn he had not foreseen.

“Rey? Who is Rey?”

Kylo sighed. He knew what was coming. If he did not admit it freely, Snoke would find another way to tear the truth from him. Kylo spared himself the trouble of being punished doubly for his deceit. “The girl you sent me to kill nineteen years ago.”

Snoke's hands tightened on the arms of his throne. Evidently, he had forgotten about her until Kylo reminded him. 

"You must have disobeyed me if she still lives." 

“Yes, Master.”

Snoke stood up and approached Kylo, bellowing at him, "I cannot believe my most trusted apprentice, my own heir, would not only disobey me but would keep it a secret from me all this time!" 

Kylo's insides clenched in fear and dread.

“I'm sorry, Master!”

“You'd better be!” Snoke raged as wild blue lightning flew from his fingertips. 

When it hit Kylo, he was thrown back against the wall, which he slid down gracelessly. His entire body was shrouded like a web with magickal electricity, and he seized in torment, writhing in unbearable agony that felt like it went on endlessly. Mercifully, he passed out and Snoke decided to end the punishment. 

When Kylo came to, Snoke was standing over him, pale eyes staring down. The king's face was livid with both fury and with the effort he had expended to create the lightning. It drained some of his vitality every time he used it. 

“The next one will kill you, Kylo Ren.” There was loathing in his voice and scorn on his face.

“You have failed me, and I have no use for pathetic failures,” he said deliberately as he turned and stalked back to his throne. After he had lowered his ancient body into it, he continued speaking, as if Kylo weren't still lying flat on his back, trying to recover from the torture.

“Your first punishment will be to bear _that scar_ for the rest of your life, however long that may be. I will allow our healers to treat the wound itself, but they will in no way mend it to prevent scarring. You are also forbidden from trying to repair it as well, my foolish apprentice. Each scar on your body is a reminder of another one of your inadequacies. I hope you have learned from them, but the way you continue to acquire them makes me think you have not.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

The words sunk in as Kylo tried to recover his breath. Once again he had been found lacking, confirming his worthlessness. So close on the heels of Rey's rejection, it hit him especially hard. Every bad thought he'd ever had about himself was true. 

“Your next punishment,” Snoke continued, “will be to find this _Rey,_ bring her here and then kill her in front of me.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

The disdain in Snoke’s voice when he said her name was like another knife in Kylo's heart. He must be very weak indeed if she had such a hold on him still.

“I cannot fathom why you did not accomplish this task the first time, but you will do so now, without delay. If you complete it, I _may_ forgo your third punishment, which is a month in the cage.” __

_ __ _

_ __ _

Kylo was still lying on the floor as Snoke dismissed him. Despite his pain, he tried to recover himself as quickly as possible. Unable to get up, he was still able to speak, though it hurt his throat.

“Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.” It was difficult and painful to speak after being shocked, but he needed to sound contrite. Especially since a month in the cage would be utter agony. 

Snoke was merciful enough to ignore Kylo and continue his business as Kylo rested and regained his strength a little. In the past, he had been forced to crawl out of the Throne Room. 

He gathered his strength in his chamber, then bathed and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t mind the scar so much, as at least it reminded him of Rey. But whatever good looks he might have once possessed were gone. He had always known in his heart that he was a monster, and his monstrousness would be on display for everyone to see for the rest of his long life. Even if he spent the remainder of it in virtuous sacrifice and repentance - which he most assuredly would not - he could never return to the Light Court, as grotesque as his appearance had become.


	9. Faerie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey had hurt Kylo and blamed herself for their fight, so she decided to go search for him. After figuring out he was Fae, a sprite pointed her in the direction of the Land of Faerie.

Rey finally approached the region of the Dark Court. As the little sprite had told her, it was deep in a dense old forest, with only a narrow trail leading inward from the road. With some trepidation, she entered the forest. Very quickly noises from the outside world tapered off, and she was only aware of rustlings of branches overhead and the crunch of fallen leaves below. The trees grew so tall and thick that very little sunlight fell upon the ground, only sinister shadows that seemed to shift without any source of the movement. She heard noise from no living creature except herself: no birdsong or chirping of insects.

Rey was afraid, but she drew strength from inside herself, the part that was in touch with the magical force she was beginning to remember from childhood. It was strong in this place, fed by the lives of trees and other plants, and Rey revived it consciously as much as she was able, for the first time since she had been a very young. She could sense the network of life that surrounded her, creating a web of energies that flowed constantly.

When Rey looked behind her, she could no longer see the entrance to the forest, which had been much brighter than the gloom that enclosed her now. She sometimes heard what sounded like whispering around her, and felt eyes on the back of her neck, but saw nothing. It was almost as if her sight had been weakened, and she was forced to rely on her other senses. She felt them begin to sharpen as she relied more on them and less on her vision. 

Following her instincts as much as the sprite's directions, she picked her way through the woods and undergrowth to an enormous hill of earth in a large clearing: the Faerie Mound. It was about three hundred feet across and maybe fifteen feet high, with a rock wall around the bottom to reinforce it and wild grasses on the top. 

She saw no entrance and slowly began to circle the large structure looking for one. At last, she found a rough doorway formed by large stones covered with strange spiral carvings. Wildflowers flowed down one side of the doorway like a small stream and next to the opening, an almost invisible footpath wound upward in a coil to the top of the mound. Several small towers of stone cairns were placed in various spots around the door, which Rey took to have some meaning, but was unable to interpret.

Cautiously, Rey approached the opening, which had no actual door, but which looked completely black inside as if light could not enter it. She found herself afraid again but grounded herself by remembering how much she regretted driving Kylo away and how much she loved him. 

This combination of feelings actually created a sense of repulsion as she approached the entrance. Rey stopped and calmed herself again, this time by concentrating on what was right in front of her, letting tendrils of it sink into her consciousness, then tapping into it. Passion. Decadence. Darkness. Desire. She tuned herself to that wavelength, and the doorway began to call to her, beckoning her inside. 

She allowed herself to be enticed toward it, letting go of her fear and embracing the emotions the mound's opening brought to mind. Once she had achieved that state, she was aware of no conscious decision to go forward, only a feeling of being drawn in until she was on the far side, emerging into a landscape that resembled the countryside behind her, but subtly different. 

The scenery inside held a strange beauty, with both elements that intrigued the eye and those that were jarring in their discord. Yet they all appeared to be of the same whole, with an eerie continuity that created strange feelings inside of Rey. She couldn’t put her finger on the differences, but colors had shifted somehow and the sky overhead looked foreboding, although she shouldn't have been able to see the sky at all, considering she was _inside_ the mound. No sun shone overhead, but the air itself was suffused with a kind of soft light. The air smelled fresh and a light breeze even lifted her hair for a moment. She felt as if the mound contained its own world, which had similarities and differences to her own. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

Now that she was inside, Rey felt surprised that the mound had allowed her to enter into the Land of Faerie. She'd heard that the cairn itself was supposed to guard the Fae from the outside world, not allowing anything or anyone foreign inside. Maybe her entanglement with Kylo had provided her with some kind of shield, or some of her own magic made her appear to be like them in some small way. 

Several footpaths led away from the entrance, curving toward faraway horizons. She closed her eyes and opened her mind to question if one path called to her. When she felt a faint tug in a particular direction, she opened her eyes and started down that road. 

Rey passed no fellow travelers and relied on her instincts when the road forked or branched off in different directions. Eventually, a castle in the heart of a stone fortress came into view. It appeared more fanciful than the castles she had seen in the mortal world, with turrets and battlements and banners like something out of...well, a Faerie tale. 

Kylo felt Rey's presence when she entered the Faerie Mound. He wouldn't have thought it was possible for her to do so, but perhaps it happened because he was so attuned to her already. Maybe their mutual dreaming had put them on the same wavelength, enough for the mound to open to her. Or maybe it had something to do with the power she had that flowed from all living things, the same power that allowed the Fae to do their magick. 

Logically Rey shouldn't have been able to get into the mound at all. She was mortal. It was unimaginable for her to be able to find the forest and work her way through it, much less enter the cairn itself. Her arrival excited and terrified him. Her life would be forfeit if Snoke got hold of her. The thought made him hurry. 

After the painful and humiliating episode in the Throne Room, Kylo had gone to bathe. He'd wanted to soothe the ache from the wounds Snoke had inflicted directly, as well as from the bruises he'd gotten from being thrown into the wall and falling to the floor. 

Feeling Rey's life force so close, however, revived him to a remarkable degree. He quickly conjured a suit of fine black clothes onto his body, then made his way to her as fast as he was able. Once he was outside the castle grounds, he began to run, rudely shouldering aside other Fae as if they were nothing. 

Rey's presence had become a shining beacon in his mind, leading him right to her. Kylo dodged livestock and soldiers in a sparring session on his way to her, feeling his blood pumping and his lungs working overtime to get to her as fast as possible. The danger Rey was in had made him realize that he had already forgiven her. Life without her would be intolerable. 

His heart leapt when he saw her. Rey was walking calmly and looking around herself casually, almost as if she were just taking a stroll, a small backpack on her shoulders. She was absolutely beautiful. Her eyes lit up when she saw Kylo, and she began running toward him as well. She slowed down to avoid colliding with him, but Kylo swept her into his embrace before he even stopped. 

Then his arms were around her and her body was flush with his. His nose was in her hair, and then his lips were on hers, and she smelled like vanilla and sandalwood and _home._

_ __ _

_ __ _

For her part, Rey was stunned to see Kylo running to her and dismayed to spy the long red mark on his cheek where she had cut him. Her joy at his appearance, though, and at his delight in seeing her temporarily outweighed her feelings of guilt. He took her into his arms like she was the only thing he had ever wanted in his life. As soon as he touched her, she felt well, as if every problem she'd ever had been just solved by being in contact with him. Rey returned his embrace, snuggled her face into his neck, and wrapped her arms around him. 

She started to tell him how sorry she was for hurting him so much, but he cut her off, his voice low and compelling.

She was surprised by his sense of urgency. He looked deeply into her eyes and asked, “Do you love me?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered right away, finally facing that feeling that had frightened her so much. 

“Do you trust me?” His voice reminded her of a warm blanket when she was cold, food when she was hungry, rest when she was weary. 

“Yes,” she repeated. 

“I know I have been a monster, but I am trying to be better, for you. Please don't ask any questions until this is over. We have to act quickly. Please, please, just do as I ask you. Marry me.”

His whiskey-colored eyes begged her wordlessly to trust him. 

“I will,” she murmured into his chest as she pulled herself into him again briefly before they broke apart.

He took her by the hand and began leading her back the way she had come, detouring into a small circular grove of oak trees a little way off from the path. 

In the center of the grove, Rey saw a simple, but elegant stone altar set with a tiny cauldron of earth, a stick of incense, a small candle and a clear glass of water, each positioned at one of the cardinal direction points. An appealing assortment of small flowers and leaves decorated the surface as well. 

As soon as they passed through the trees, it was as if the air pressure had changed. No sounds from the outside penetrated the circle, and Kylo's voice rang out as he called for Taliesin. 

A handsome male Fae of indeterminate age with a short black beard and long dark hair came out of the trees and approached them. He was dressed in rich brown robes which fluttered when he and Kylo embraced. Then Kylo turned to introduce him to Rey.

“Taliesin, this is my beloved. I want you to marry us. My wife-to-be is mortal, but she was born royalty and I would make her one of us.”

A part of Rey was shocked to find out she was royal, but all of her attention was focused on Kylo and their nuptials.

“Royal, yes, but not entirely mortal,” Taliesin pronounced. “Can you not feel her connection to the energy created by all life?”

“Please,” Kylo pleaded with him, his voice urgent.

The priest sighed and continued. 

“Now?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, and Kylo said yes.

Rey noticed that the Druid was not in the same hurry as Kylo was. He took his time looking Rey over respectfully and offered her his hand, asking her name as he did so. 

“Rey,” she told him simply. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Time had gone so slowly while she had waited for her parents, and then again when she had taken her long journey here, but now everything was happening all at once. 

“Very well,” the Druid pronounced. His manner changed from casual to deliberate and practiced. He waved his hand purposefully toward the altar and a silken red cord appeared in the center.

“Stand next to each other,” he instructed as he walked a ritualistic circle clockwise around the altar. Lemon verbena scented the air all around them, along with cedar and rose, the herbs and flowers symbolic of love, marriage, and passion; the cedar representative of immortality and elevation. 

After exchanging a look, Rey and Kylo closed the small distance between them, with Kylo's strong arm coming around Rey’s back to rest at her waist. Rey could have sworn she heard the soft tinkling of bells around them. 

Taliesin took their hands with his own and brought them together. He turned briefly to the altar, took up the red cord and wrapped it around their joined hands.

Then he faced them, gazing at them solemnly.

“Do you, Rey, give your consent to marry Kylo Ren, a Knight of the Winter Court, to give up your humanity forever and to bind yourself to him for all eternity? Do you pledge your loyalty, your fidelity, and your love?”

Rey didn't have time to consider the implications of what she was agreeing to. Kylo had begged her not to ask any questions though, so she didn't. She knew she loved him and she wanted to be with him. 

“Yes, I do,” she pronounced clearly. 

The Druid’s eyes flicked to Kylo’s.

“Do you, Kylo Ren, Knight of the Winter Court, consent to marry Rey, this human woman, and bring her into a sacred marriage of Faerie forever? Do you pledge your loyalty, your fidelity, and your love?”

Rey felt Kylo's hand tighten slightly on hers beneath the silken cord. 

“I do,” he said loudly and clearly.

"I hereby speak the banns of sacred marriage between Kylo Ren of the Winter Court and the human woman, Rey,” he pronounced.

Taliesin turned his attention back to Kylo now, asking, “Do you have a token to solemnize this union?”

Kylo opened his hand to show the ring he had conjured there for Rey, a simple band of twisted gold and silver. Rey inhaled involuntarily at the beauty of the two metals entwined as he placed the ring on her finger, then looked at Taliesin expectantly. 

“You are now husband and wife,” the Druid told them with a smile. “Blessed be this union.”

Kylo’s voice joined Taliesin’s as he ended the ceremony. “So mote it be.”

All three of them looked up as the candle on the altar flared to life suddenly, as did the stick of incense.

Rey felt a burst of heat radiated up her arm from where she and Kylo held hands, spreading out into her entire body with a sensation of warmth and love. She felt more connected with her new husband than ever.

Kylo too was looking between their joined hands and her eyes. 

“Don't be afraid,” he whispered to her. “I feel it too.”

He leaned toward her for a brief kiss, then he turned to thank the dignified man before them. 

Taliesin had one last word for them. 

“The wedding of two people into one is a powerful spell. Be aware that sometimes magick has unintended consequences," he said. "Sometimes you can change the course of fate if you can find a way to weave your own intentions into the preordained pattern." 

Rey felt something speaking to her in her heart, but its murmur was so low she was not quite able to make it out. Her intuition told her that joining her thread together with Kylo’s was changing Fate’s path even as they stood there in the circle of trees. 

The words took root in Kylo’s mind as well, as he considered how it was impossible to avoid one’s fate, but perhaps one could change it slightly.

“I wish you the best of luck,” Taliesen continued to Kylo, “but I cannot be held accountable for this marriage. It is on your head.”

Rey heard a commotion in the forest behind them. The noise was sudden in their little echo chamber, as if it had appeared all at once, instead of gradually getting louder as usual. She and Kylo turned around as one to see a troop of Fae warriors in armor advancing, with the lead warrior's sword unsheathed. 

The Praetorian Guard in charge of the squad stopped in front of the newly married couple and waved Taliesin away.

“You are dismissed, wizard,” he announced condescendingly.

Taliesin bowed deferentially and receded back the way he had come into the trees. 

Rey stood her ground firmly next to Kylo, trying not to be intimidated. She felt strongly as linked to him as if they were sharing the same consciousness. 

The king's guard addressed Kylo.

“Kylo Ren, Knight of the Winter Court, you are hereby summoned to the Throne Room, where justice shall be dealt out by the king. Bring the girl with you.”

“Of course,” Kylo answered obediently, although Rey detected the hostility in his voice. She wondered how Snoke had known she was with him. 

As Kylo removed his hand from Rey's, allowing the red cord to fall back onto her wrist, he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I need you to follow my lead. I will do everything within my power to protect you.” 

She hurriedly fastened the cord around her wrist to save it. 

Kylo had separated from her momentarily and was using a hand motion to indicate his entire body. A stunning set of scaled black armor took the place of the simple silk clothing he had been wearing. The shining red handle of a sword rose above the leather scabbard attached to his belt. Now he took Rey's hand again and began to follow the head of the troop. 

Rey didn't know whether to gawk at Kylo's magnificent armor or worry about being taken to Snoke. She decided to do both at once. 

The armor itself was formed from shiny black metal plates overlapping each other, looking like nothing so much as the ebony scales of a dragon. She had never seen anything like it. Kylo looked very handsome but very stern in it.

As for where they were being led, she guessed it would be to the castle she had already seen. It looked as impressive to her as it had before, perhaps even more so, knowing as she did that they were on their way to their possible deaths. Its walls stood high and proud, decorated with battlements. Flags flew from the towers, and ornamental gardens lined the entrance walkway. Even now, it appeared to be enchanted in some manner. She saw a subtle sparkle in the stones of the walls, and the banners held colors that were impossibly bright and vivid. Rey knew she was completely out of her depth.


	10. Snoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo reunited and married in Faerie, but at the end of the ceremony, Snoke's Praetorian Guard took them prisoner. 
> 
> Rey prepares herself to confront Snoke.

Rey glanced up as they crossed the threshold onto the castle grounds. She was intimidated by the thick door which had been raised to open the entranceway. Once it came down, it would be impossible to leave.

The guard led them into a courtyard filled mainly with people who could at least pass for human if they so desired. Mixed among them, however, were a number of Fae of such dark appearance that she had never imagined before. Some were larger than human beings and some smaller, with tattered wings, dark eyes with pupils slit like a cat's, and strange awkward limbs. She had been told that such creatures resided at the Winter Court, but her imagination had not been up to the task of picturing them. They were mostly going about whatever business they had in the fort: cleaning armor, taking wheelbarrows full of goods from one place to another, or tending animals. Many of them, though, stopped to stare as openly at Rey as she stared at them. Obviously, the likes of her were not often seen in these parts. 

They crossed the courtyard to enter the castle itself, which held a confusing maze of hallways and odd flights of stairs that culminated in the Throne Room, a cavernous chamber draped with red tapestries. Rey felt a little intimidated, despite her best efforts to be calm and courageous. She told herself that it had been designed to inspire awe and fear, so her feelings were perfectly natural. 

Upon the huge black throne sat a creature unlike any Rey had seen yet, larger than a human man or any of the inhabitants she had seen in the courtyard, yet still ancient and frail. He might have been quite formidable when he had been young and strong, but now he was twisted and craven, his body and face marred with injuries too severe for even him to heal. A hideous scar ran from the top of his bald head to his hairless brow. A scar on one side of his face had contorted his mouth, revealing uneven yellowed teeth. His other cheek was disfigured as well, making it appear sunken. What was left of his face was lined with crevices and fissures which revealed further weakness. Despite his supernatural ability to heal, he was being consumed by the dark energy he used to power his magicks.

Belying his chilling appearance, he had a regal bearing and wore a robe made from cloth-of-gold. Cunning, pale blue eyes stared out from his grey features.

Rey detected of a web of energy surrounding him just on the edge of her consciousness. It warred with the pull she felt toward Kylo. 

The Praetorian Guard brought them before the king, and Kylo dropped to one knee almost automatically. 

Snoke greeted him extravagantly. “Well done, my good and faithful apprentice. If I ever doubted you, my faith in you is now restored.”

Rey was not taken in by the gentleness of his voice and the elegance of his speech. 

Kylo remained immobile. 

The guard holding Rey’s arm pulled her forward, closer to the brittle-looking king. 

King Snoke smiled benevolently and motioned her forward with his hand as if he were her kind old grandfather, and she was a greatly indulged school girl. 

“Young Rey. Welcome,” Snoke said. “Come closer, child.” 

Rey felt paralyzed, frozen, unable to obey his command. 

Snoke looked her over avidly. “So much strength. The same strength I saw when you were born. You had it even as an untaught child, which is why I sent Kylo to kill you in the first place. I never thought to meet a human whose power rivaled my own. Yet, here you are. Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that you would one day grow stronger than him.” 

Rey could almost have believed he was sincere. 

She just stared at him. She didn't feel powerful. She felt totally at his mercy.

“Closer I said,” Snoke demanded, his voice grating. 

Rey felt herself being pulled inexorably toward the throne against her will, feet dragging. She tried to resist but was unable to gain any traction. She was helpless to move anything except her face. She suspected this was something that had happened to Kylo many times before, which reminded her of the scars all over his body. This was the man who had abused him so horribly, who had isolated him to the point where he felt neither love nor joy and was relegated to the shadows of the Dark Court. It angered her.

“You know, I felt your presence as soon as you entered Faerie, my dear. Surely you did not think you could hide from me.”

Rey didn't know what to say. She hadn't been aware of much except her joy at being reunited with Kylo, then her distress as she was almost immediately whisked away to face some kind of judgment.

“Everything has gone according to my plan,” Snoke gloated. “With the way my young apprentice refused to kill you as a baby, I knew you had to be the source of some special power. It was not fully developed, yet somehow you managed to bond him to you. When he deceived me about your death, I rightly punished him for his failure, but let him live, knowing that he would draw you to me when the time was right.”

Rey saw Kylo’s golden brown flash with surprise. Hearing about the plot that had led to her parents’ death was traumatic enough without thinking that Kylo’s time with her had been part of Snoke’s overarching plan. 

“Poor Kylo. All these years I have kept him dangling, waiting for me to die or step off the throne, unaware I had a particular purpose for him beyond even that as my heir. He has served his function in bringing you to me perfectly, now that your power has matured. After I consume your life force, nothing will stand in my way. Neither the kings of men nor the Light Court will be able to stay my hand.” 

Now the polite mask had fallen away, exposing the steel underneath the civilized demeanor. Rey felt angry that he had used Kylo to bring her there. 

She was held in place by an invisible force as Snoke turned to her new husband.

“Kylo Ren,” the Faerie King started in his plummy voice, “Now that I see this girl with my own eyes, I can understand better why you spared her life. She is lovely, and I understand why you would want to take her to your bed. Now, however, your little romance is over and I will take her life and her power. And _then_ I will punish you for your disobedience.” __

_ __ _

Kylo remained immobile, his head down, but Rey saw the tension building in his body and felt his fear radiating outwards. 

Her stomach curdled and her hands were free enough to clench by her sides. She had finally reached her limit. 

“Don’t you touch him!” she yelled at the Snoke. “You’re a sadistic tyrant. Kylo is a thousand times better than you will ever be. You prey on those weaker than you, including your own heir! He has endured enough from you, and I will never let you hurt him again for as long as I live.”

“Oh, my, what a treat!” Snoke chuckled condescendingly. “Oh. Have you fallen _in love_ with my apprentice? Do you believe he has developed the capacity to return your love? Young fool! It will never happen. He brought you to me to die. He is a monster! His heart is as black as night. He would gladly murder you to save himself and never shed a tear! And now he will kill you will the cruelest stroke.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

A spark of doubt was ignited in Rey’s mind. They had just gotten married. Surely she had not misjudged her husband. He did love her, just as she loved him. But she wasn’t able to see Kylo’s face, and he said nothing. 

Snoke’s hold on her tightened as he dropped her to her knees in front of Kylo, who was now standing with his red saber in hand. His expression was unreadable as he stared down at her.   
“My worthy apprentice,” Snoke addressed Kylo. “Son of Winter. Kill this mortal and prove your worthiness to me!”

Kylo’s eyes looked up toward Snoke and he raised his head. “No,” he said loudly and firmly. “I won’t.”

“Kill her!” his master shrieked. 

When Kylo refused the order a second time, shaking his head definitively, Snoke stood and lifted his gnarled hand toward Kylo. Blue lightning sparked from his fingers, bounced off the floor and arced toward him. 

Rey realized that when Snoke had turned his attention toward his apprentice, he had released his grip on her. She was no longer paralyzed.

The lightning had just struck Kylo when she stood up to put herself in its way, interrupting the flow and preventing it from continuing to strike its intended target, Kylo.

The force of the current knocked her off of her feet and excruciating tendrils of the energy constricted in a net around her. Her body seized, shaking violently, and a cry of anguish was torn from her mouth. 

Kylo had been struck by the lightning, but not disabled. It had been merely a glancing blow. 

Every time he experienced it, it was worse than it had been before, as its effect accumulated in his scarred and battered body. Snoke had warned him that the next incident would be fatal, and Kylo had no doubt it would have been without Rey’s interference. But in addition to Kylo having been prepared for it this time, it had barely grazed him before shifting to Rey. 

He knew that a human such as Rey should not have been able to withstand Snoke’s lightning. It should have vaporized her instantly, but she lived still, thrashing on the floor of the Throne Room. He was awed to realize his new bride had just saved his life. 

Immediately Kylo raised his saber and pointed it toward Rey's writhing body, channeling all his will into repelling Snoke’s raw power. The sapphire blue lines of power shifted from Rey's body to Kylo's sword then returned to the old king himself leaving Rey lying limply on the ground trying to recover. 

Even as he did so, Kylo saw that creating the lightning was draining Snoke simultaneously as his own power surged back at him with all its dark destructive power. Using electricity on another usually drained its creator, but the creator was then able to garner enough dark energy of his own through his victim’s pain and anger. This time Snoke was not able to. His own ability to access magick was fried. 

Kylo alone would not have been able to push his own weapon back at him, but his union with Rey had strengthened him. 

The deadly circuit doubled the pressure on the old injuries of the King’s body. Unable to continue attacking, feeling his will fading as it went into the lightning, he shrieked. Drawn by the hideous sound, Kylo watched as the king’s face, already shrunken and wrinkled, caved in completely with a wet sucking sound. Kylo watched almost disbelievingly as he saw Snoke’s body shriveling inside the gold robe, becoming smaller as his body was consumed by his dark magic. The body hesitated for a moment, then topped forward, collapsing completely, black smoke wreathing it. 

Kylo’s feelings were surreal. He felt surprise, reluctant grief and an odd sense of deliverance. He had given so much of his life to his master, basked in Snoke’s rare approval and suffered under his frequently unreasonable wrath. He had been a rare constant in Kylo’s life, and Kylo had never expected to outlive him. He had never believed it was possible to kill him. Kylo’s life was being reset in this instant, with the ever present shadow of Snoke over him destroyed. He was free.

Kylo and Rey stared at each other in silence for a moment, then glanced around at the guards. Kylo could see that Rey half expected them to attack her now, as the two of them had just killed their ruler. But Kylo had been Snoke's heir. Knowing these minutes were crucial, he stepped up now and spoke to them in a confident voice. 

If it had been anyone else, the guards probably would have rushed them both, but they held back, having witnessed for themselves that Snoke had been unbalanced in his assault on them. It had been self-defence and there was no precedent for a noble attacking a royal. It had never been done.

So when Kylo, sword still in hand, ordered them to stand down, they did, putting their own weapons away and returning to their customary positions. And when he told them to bring in a healer, one of them went to do so immediately.

Kylo sheathed his sword and did what he had wanted to do so badly earlier: he ran over to help Rey. He needed to see if she was all right, to find out how seriously she had been damaged by the attack. He needed to look at her face and know that she still loved him. 

She was lying on the floor, still conscious, but disoriented and in pain from the attack. He knelt and bent over her to look into her eyes. 

“What was that?” she asked in a trembling voice, clutching his hand. “I've never even heard of anything like that.”

“It was magickal lightning, one of the Hands of Power,” Kylo told her as he put his arms around her gently in his desperation to hold her. He never wanted to be separated from her again. “Only the strongest of our people can produce it.”

He spared a glance at Snoke’s body, which had disappeared under the flattened gold robe.“And those most hungry for power,” Kylo continued. “It can drain the life force from the wielder as well as electrocute the victim.” 

The shaking of Rey’s body was dying down. She lifted her arms to put them around his neck to pull him closer to her. “How were you able to fight it?”

He kissed the crown of her head, her forehead, then her lips. Everything he had ever wanted was right there with him. 

“This is a magickal weapon,” he said, indicating the hilt of his saber.

Two healers arrived and were able to start ministering to Rey immediately, helping her to sit up as they laid their hands on her. Kylo crouched there at her side to comfort her as they eased her pain. He had been injured too, but it was nothing compared to his concern for her.   
The healers did their work in silence, focusing on the unseen tissue beneath Rey’s skin. One produced a bottle of watered wine for her, which helped to soothe her further.

As soon as she was well enough that Kylo could pick her up from the floor, he did so, despite his pain and weakness, then sat down on the throne with her in his lap. They looked into each other’s eyes, enjoying the newly strengthened connection between them.

“The last time Snoke used that on me, he told me the next time would kill me,” Kylo whispered to his wife. “You saved my life when you stepped between us. No one has ever done anything like that for me before.”

Tears stood in his amber eyes. He felt as if a wound in his heart had started to heal. Something that had been restless and dissatisfied within him for years was becoming quiet at last. 

Kylo remembered back to the happiness that he'd felt when Taliesin had joined them together as if pure ecstasy had raced up his arm and flooded his entire system. Marrying two people turned them into a single entity, and it was, as the Druid had told them, a very effective spell. 

“I didn’t know if what I was trying to do was even possible,” he told Rey. “I’ve never been able to use power like that before. I think it was due to our bond. We strengthen each other.”

He kissed her lips tenderly, then her forehead. He thought he would never be able to get enough of her.

“I think somehow our marriage made us greater together than we were by ourselves. Being made as one, coming together, has made us better. I've heard myths about it happening before, in Faerie. And it’s perfect since I want you to rule at my side as my equal and be my Queen of Winter.” 

This time Rey leaned toward him for a kiss, her arm going around his neck and drawing him toward her. They clung to each other for a few minutes, savoring the exhilaration and happiness of being together after a long separation. 

“You were born a princess,” Kylo said. “And you will be a wonderful Queen”

The healers exchanged a look, then got up and left with a respectful bow. 

When the couple broke apart, Rey touched the cheek where she had left a wound. The sight of it tore at her soul. “I'm so sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry I called you a monster. I shouldn’t have judged you. I was wrong. I don't know how you can love me when I have been so cruel to you.” 

Kylo took her hand from his cheek and kissed her palm. “It was too much happening at the same time. I hadn't understood how deeply you had held onto that story that your parents were coming back for you, and that was all my fault.”

Now tears formed in Rey’s eyes, spilled over and ran down her face.

“It was all I had for a long time,” she confessed. “I had built my entire life around it, and when it was pulled out from under me, I panicked. I shouldn't have blamed you. You kept me alive when you were supposed to kill me. You saved me.”

Kylo felt very grateful for his good fortune. She understood. She forgave him. 

“It’s forgotten,” Kylo assured her. “You had an emotional reaction in the moment. I can't hold that against you, not after what you did for me just now.”

He felt an overwhelming sense of relief knowing that she loved him. 

“It didn’t happen quite the way you think,” he told her. “I didn’t kill your parents, but I saw them die. I’ll tell you everything when we have both recovered a bit more. I never should have held your reaction against you anyway. I overreacted too. I can't believe you came all that way to find me. It must have taken a long time.”

Rey nodded. “But from how little this cut on your face has healed, I guess it wasn't such a long time for you.”

“No. Time runs differently here than it does in the outside world.”

“Rey, you have saved my life in more ways than one. If you wish to stay here as my wife, I want it to be of your own free will, because you love me, not because I tricked you or because you felt some obligation.”

“Kylo,” Rey said seriously, “I love you, and I don't want to go back to the outside world unless it's with you. I would love to have adventures and see new things like we talked about, but not if you aren't with me. Being with you is the most important thing to me.”

Kylo kissed her tenderly. “If that’s what you truly want, we can be together always. We are as one person.”

He magickally produced a pomegranate and presented it to her. “Consider this to be our wedding feast. Once you have eaten in the land of Faerie, you become part of it yourself. If you want to leave and return to your mortal life, you can still do so, and I will think of you only with gratitude. If you truly want to stay with me as my wife, eat of this pomegranate, and you will be as immortal as I am”.

Rey smiled as she took the pomegranate and began to peel the rind off. As soon as she was able to get to the seeds, she took a handful out, popped them into her mouth and bit down, creating a rush of sweet-tasting juice in her mouth. Kylo leaned over, pulled her close and kissed her quickly to get a taste of the nectar. Rey felt him smiling against her lips and his heart beating against her chest. 

“Welcome to eternity, my love.”

Rey and Kylo had been married for several years before she became pregnant. She had always dreamed of having a child of her own and now she was overjoyed.

The entirety of the Dark Court was overjoyed, in actuality. Faery children were somewhat rare, and the announcement of a new one was always a cause for celebration. 

Rey herself was glowing more than usual as she looked over the new nursery that was being built. Kylo surprised her gently by coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her, one hand coming to rest on her belly. 

“I’m so happy, my love,” he told her. 

“I am too,” she agreed. 

“Did you enjoy going back to visit your birthplace?” he asked about her recent trip.

“Yes, it was wonderful. Thank you so much for showing me where it was. I can’t wait to take the baby after it’s born.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you last time, but we will definitely go together as a family next time.”

“I’d love that.”

Kylo nuzzled her hair, as he always did. “Have you thought of any names?”

Rey turned around to face him and leaned her head into his chest. “I have. It’s an unusual one, but it should be appropriate whether it’s a boy or a girl. I was inspired by our love and our life together.”

He kissed the top of her head, another gesture he repeated endlessly. “And what name is that?”

“Pleasure, my husband. Pleasure.”

EPILOGUE 

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a kingdom lost its king, queen, and princess all in a day. Everyone in the kingdom mourned, but life went on, and other rulers were found to take care of the nation.

Years later, a beautiful queen and a handsome king came to visit. They seemed to have an eerie familiarity with the kingdom as well as an abiding love for it. They bestowed a number of magical gifts upon the people there, including fair weather, good harvests, and peace and prosperity, without asking for anything in return. 

They were said to visit again every few years, often with a daughter and son in tow, each time giving generous gifts with no expectation of anything in return. 

It is said in this that they still appear to this day, whenever the people of the kingdom are in great need.


End file.
